"So it is indeed; a great lady--a foreigner," replied the _padrona_, under her breath. "Just see, signorino, what you make of this name." While she felt in her pocket she went on: "It is Dottor Segati sends her to me. Oh, he has sent me families before when there was a patient among them; and this apartment has always given satisfaction; that I can say with my hand upon my conscience. There--can you read it? I can tell the letters, but I can't make the sound. One ought to have another tongue on purpose for these foreign names." Prospero studied a second, then pronounced, clearly, "Gräfin Paula von Schattenort." "_Gräfin_ means Countess," said the landlady. "The doctor told me that she is a Countess; but whether Danish or Swedish or Hollandish I don't remember. For me all those countries are the same. Schattenort, you call it? What would that be in Italian?" Prospero laughed. "It stays as it is, dear lady. Is this Countess young, do you know?" he went on, looking again at the name on the paper he still held. "Is she coming here for her health?" "I don't know anything beyond the fact that the doctor engages the rooms for her, and I can rely upon him. Oh, he has sent me families before, you know, who have always been perfectly satisfied with me, and I with them. You can see yourself that the quarters are such that even a Countess might find herself well in them--" "Yes, truly," replied Prospero, agreeably. "She would be hard to please if she were not content. Well, if you allow me now, I go. Have you perhaps a commission of any sort for me? I shall do myself a pleasure in serving you." "Too good--much too good. If you would just say the name over--" "Von Schattenort." "What it is to have a memory! What a thing is education! Not but that also I can make myself understood in the French tongue. Schattenort--Schattenort. I should not like to _scomparire_, you will understand, at the very first meeting. But if I forget, I will simply say _Signora Contessa_. Only one likes to be able to tell friends whom one has got in the house." Prospero, late already, was hurrying down the stairs, his music under his arm; at the foot he was forced to stop. He took off his hat, and leaned against the wall to let the ladies pass. The gray-haired gentleman talking unpractised French he knew to be Dottor Segati. He fixed upon Paula von Schattenort without a second's hesitation; of the two ladies, only the one in the hat and feather could, in his conception of possibility, be she. He was half-conscious as she passed him on her upward way of a faint pang of disappointment. The name had suggested to his imagination something tall and frail, delicate yet imposing, exceedingly, luminously blond, with eyes of a corn-flower blue. The magic of the name was defeated.