‘Now Rome will be itself again,’ said he gallantly, ‘now that the flower of Casa Dietrich has returned, looking more blooming than ever. Per Bacco! you have improved immensely while you have been away.’ He spoke Italian to her, a fluent and comprehensible, but very disagreeable and foreign Italian. ‘You make my flowers look faded, but they must get accustomed to that. See, I bought these in Via Condotti as I came along, for you--on purpose for you! They are scarce enough yet.’ He laid a spray or two of exquisite white lilac beside her plate. She looked anything but pleased, crimsoned to her temples as she muttered some words of thanks, it might be, and then grew gradually pale again. Her want of enthusiasm was amply atoned for by her mother’s superfluity of it. ‘Ah, lovely, most lovely!’ she cried, so that all the table could hear, first clasping her hands and then gesticulating with them. ‘Caro Marchmont, you are too generous. These must have cost a small fortune. You see the child is quite overcome. She does not know how to thank you for them.’ ‘She either does not know how or does not wish to do it,’ said Marchmont, with a simper which was not altogether fatuous; there was an edge, as it were, to its silliness--as one might say, weakness tempered with cruelty. He made his way round to the empty place on the signora’s left hand, opposite to Fulvia, whose face had again grown stony during this dialogue between her mother and, it would seem, her admirer. Not her lover--surely not her declared lover, thought Minna, to whom the whole scene had been inexpressibly repugnant and painful. Behind the vulgarity and absurdity of the two speakers and the constrained silence of the girl, she seemed to read horrible possibilities. The ‘spectre,’ as she had immediately dubbed Marchmont in her own mind, was now hidden from her sight, but she could see Fulvia and Fulvia’s mother, and she hardly knew what to make of the spectacle. A performance something like that which had already taken place continued throughout the meal. The young girl was by turns haughty and disdainful, cross, sulky, embarrassed, and then, with an immense effort, superficially polite. In each phase she looked exceedingly handsome and attractive. Mr. Marchmont’s shrill voice, with its curious vulgar accent, was strident, and dominated the conversation at that end of the table. Now he spoke English, anon Italian, but in whichever tongue he spoke his theme was the same: his own belongings, possessions, wishes, intentions, and the great prices he had paid for the things he had, or intended to pay for those he meant to have. Signora Dietrich listened ever with the same rapture of attention, the same fixedly smiling mouth, the same wandering, unmoved eyes, and the same loud expressions of delight in his conversation and affairs in general.