Then the Italian, as if with an instinctive motion, laid his other hand over the book, and clasped them both upon it as though to hold something fast. Then to my amazement and to Sara’s--but to something more than amazement on Sara’s part--something very much like pique and offence--he turned towards Harry and began to talk on indifferent matters. I had noticed a half-weary, half-impatient sigh escape him as he laid his hands over that book; but he showed no other symptom of emotion. The next moment he was talking in very good English, slightly, very slightly, broken with now and then a foreign idiom, something about public affairs. I confess I felt disappointed as well as Sara. He had recognised that name; somehow it was familiar to him; and his enigmatical answer had naturally stimulated our curiosity. He left us behind him staring and wondering, when he suddenly glided from the brink of some revelation to those quiet remarks upon English politics. Harry, full of his share of the common excitement, did not enter into it with half so much heart as Mr. Luigi. Harry blundered and was awkward, his thoughts being elsewhere. Mr. Luigi was quite undisturbed and at his ease. Sara scarcely spoke again while he remained; she did all but turn her back upon him; she showed her pique quite clearly enough to catch the quick eye of the Italian. Altogether he did not stay very long, thinking us, I daresay, rather an uncomfortable party; and Harry, disappointed, as I had expected, not to find me alone, and be able to hold a comfortable consultation, went downstairs with him to smoke a cigar. “Now they are gone,” cried Sara; “now the man in the iron mask has left us. I wonder if that is what one would call a romantic Italian? ah! I’d rather have fat Domenico. Now they’re gone, do tell me, once for all, what is godmamma Sarah to you?” “Nothing in the world that I know of,” said I, faltering a little; “we have only that drawing and her name in the old book.” “I know there is something between her and _him_,” said Sara, returning, to my great dismay to the other books on the table; “she knows about him, or he knows about her, or something. You know she was a long time abroad. What funny old books! Was it among those you found the drawing? But, stop, here is another Mortimer--Richard A. Mortimer--who is he? Papa has been their agent for centuries, and I have known them all my life, but I never heard of a Richard Mortimer. Do tell me, who was he?” “Indeed, it is all very odd,” cried I, really fluttered out of my self-possession. “I wonder what will come of it? It is very strange and bewildering. Richard Mortimer was my father.”