‘Horrible woman!’ thought Minna. ‘I wonder what she is up to. Does she take this fellow for a rich man, and think she can get him to marry her daughter? Preposterous! Rich or poor, he has seen the seamy side of life, he has seen more bad than good, and is fully alive to all the useful things he can buy with his money if he has it. Why, he can have position and good birth as well as beauty, if he will pay enough. He won’t marry the daughter of Signora Dietrich--lucky for her!’ She had become so intensely interested in the drama at that end of the table that she had absolutely forgotten her immediate neighbours. At this moment she happened, during a short pause in the conversation, to cast her eyes across the table, and she encountered those of Signor Giuseppe, fixed with a fascinated look on her face. His own expression seemed to question, to study, to interrogate her eyes, as if he would have forced them to confess plainly the thought that was in her mind. There was an anxious, wistful inquiry in his gaze which went to her heart, even while she started a little and coloured a little at being thus caught watching the proceedings at the end of the table with such interest. With a sigh she recovered herself, and tried to enter into conversation with him. But the effort was not successful; Signor Giuseppe did not respond. There was no more of his old peevishness and mistrust towards herself; he had evidently crushed that once for all after their explanation of last night. This was not, either, his usual angry irritation with the misdoings of the servants or the shortcomings of the dinner. It was, as Minna keenly felt, something very much deeper, sadder, and more tragical than any of those feelings. His silence was the silence of profound and hopeless grief and disapprobation, and she presently ceased to make any effort to disturb it. The rest of the company appeared to be as usual much interested in their own affairs, with the exception of a bad-tempered Polacca, who expressed her opinion audibly in very bad German, to the effect that that woman was as great a fool, and the girl as complete a ninny, as ever; and that a woman, whose business it was to make her living by keeping a hotel, had no right to dress herself out in silks and satins as if she had been the hostess of a private dinner-party. Minna suppressed a smile, but the next thing she heard interested her more. Mr. Marchmont was saying: ‘Signorina Fulvia, how long will it take you to make yourself ready for the opera? I have got the tickets here in my pocket. Took a box at a premium at Piales. It is _Lucia di Lammermoor_. Surely you want to go. Your mother looks as if she were ready for anything, as she always is--from a ride in a tramcar to a box at the opera.’