"Indeed, sir," she put in, smoothing down at her peasant-skirt, "I think you first found me lodging upon a bare rock, and even in this new dress it hardly becomes me to be more fastidious." "I was thinking less of the lodgings, Princess, than of the company: though, to be sure, the girls are very good-hearted, and Donna Julia, our _prima amorosa_, makes a most discreet _duenna_, off the boards. There is Badcock too--il signore Badcocchio: give Badcock a hint, and he will diffuse a most permeating respectability. For the young ladies who dwell at the entrance of the court, over the archway, I won't answer. My acquaintance with them has not passed beyond an interchange of winks: but we might send Badcock to expostulate with them." "You are not dealing with a child, sir," said the Princess, with a look at me and a somewhat heightened colour. "Be assured that I shall have eyes only for what I choose to see." Mr. Fett bowed. "As for the lodgings, I can guarantee them. They lie on the edge of a small Jew quarter--not the main _ghetto_-- and within a stone's-throw of the alleged birthplace of Columbus; if that be a recommendation. Actually they are rated in the weavers' quarter, the burgh of San Stefano, between the old and new walls, a little on the left of the main street as you go up from Sant' Andrea towards Porticello, by the second turning beyond the Olive Gate." "I thank you," I interrupted, "but at a reasonable pace we might arrive there before you have done giving us the direction." "My loquacity, sir, did you understand it," said Mr. Fett, with an air of fine reproach, "springs less from the desire to instruct than from the ebullience of my feelings at so happy a rencounter." "Well, that's very handsomely said," I acknowledged. "Oh, sir, I have a deal to tell, and to hear! But we will talk anon. Meanwhile"--he touched my arm as he led the way, and I fell into step beside him--"permit me to note a change in the lady since I last had the pleasure of meeting her--a distinct lessening of _hauteur_--a touch of (shall I say?) womanliness. Would it be too much to ask if you are running away with her?" "It would," said I. "As a matter of fact she is in Genoa to seek her brother, the Prince Camillo." "Nevertheless," he insisted, and with an impertinence I could not rebuke (for fear of drawing the attention of the passers-by, who were numerous)--"nevertheless I divine that you have much either to tell me or conceal."