Minna pointed it out to her. Fulvia looked at it for some little time in silence. She did not smile, she did not frown, but turned at last to Minna, saying simply, though very gravely: ‘It is very pretty--and very sentimental. He ought to do better than that, and he intends to.’ ‘Does he?’ They were now really walking away. ‘To tell you the truth, I was almost more surprised to see him than you. I thought he was in the Tyrol, or Italy, somewhere, for the whole summer.’ ‘He was at Como when we were there a month or two ago. He was even then on his way home from Southern Italy and Sicily. He came to England about a fortnight after we did, and of course we have seen a good deal of him since. He knows everything, you see,’ she added, in the same grave, matter-of-fact tone. ‘We have some few acquaintances in London, and houses where we visited; but my husband is morbidly anxious that they should not know about our being here now. And yet he gets so nervous and fidgety if he has not some outsider to talk to. So Mr. Riemann’s society has been a real godsend.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ said Minna vaguely. At the door of the gallery, Fulvia gave Minna her card and address, and held out her hand. She did not avoid her friend’s eyes. She smiled most frankly and most sweetly upon her as she shook hands. It was Fulvia’s old smile--outwardly. Holding her hand for a moment, Minna said: ‘I shall be writing to Signor Oriole. I shall tell him I have met you. It would be absurd not to do so. Will you not give me some message for him?’ Fulvia’s lips tightened for a moment. Then she said quietly: ‘Please give him my love, and say that perhaps we may meet during the summer, if--supposing we should by any chance think of this place you have told me of.’ ‘Very well,’ said Minna, and Fulvia added cheerfully: ‘I am so glad he is independent now. It must make everything so much easier for him.’ With another pressure of the hand they parted. Fulvia got into her carriage, and was driven away. Minna, torn by all kinds of different emotions, kept thinking, ‘How glad I am to have found her! How I wish she would not keep saying she is glad he is independent, as if that compensated for everything else! I shall see her again to-morrow. What is she in reality? What has he become? She is a riddle to me yet.’ Vaguely she went out into the street, looking about her with the equally vague intention of getting into an omnibus to go part of the way home, and finally, with an impatient ‘pshaw!’ beckoned to the driver of a hansom, got into it, and was likewise borne into the working-day world again. CHAPTER XVI. At a few minutes after half-past one on the following day, Minna rang the bell of the large, demure-looking door of a large, well-kept, and equally demure-looking house in a good street off one of the most fashionable squares. ‘Lodgings,’ perhaps, but evidently first-rate ones, both as to accommodation and, probably, price.