“Godmamma!” cried Sara, with her eyes flashing, “I never knew that you spied upon people before!” “Nor did I,” said I, quietly. “You may flatter yourself you are quite the first that ever found it out. Don’t crush your hand to pieces, child! _I_ don’t want to know what you are about.” On this the impatient little girl threw the book open again with a sound that echoed through all the library. “Everybody may know what I am doing! Now don’t be angry, godmamma, I mean I quite intended to tell you if I found anything,” cried Sara. “Look here, this is just what it is. You said you had promised to help that poor Italian gentleman, and I know quite well you have never tried yet to find out anything for him. You need not look suspicious. I am interested about him. There is no harm in that, is there? If he were as old as Ellis, and as fat as his servant, I should be interested in him all the same.” “Little Sara, never tell fibs,” said I. “I am just fifty, and you are only seventeen; but _I_ should not be interested in him, all the same, if he were old and fat, I assure you. Let me hear, now, what you have been doing. You have nothing at all to do with him, remember; it was me, and only me, he applied to; but let us hear what it is.” “Oh, it is nothing at all,” said Sara in a disappointed tone. “I thought somebody might be found out, in some of these books, that had married an Italian. I like the ‘Peerage;’ it is the funniest thing in the world to see how all the people are twisted and linked together like network. Everybody in the world must be everybody else’s cousin, if all the common people’s families were like the peers.” “To be sure we are,” said I, “only so distant it won’t count; but I don’t see what this has to do with what we were talking of before. Did you find nobody that had married an Italian in all the ‘Peerage,’ Puss?” “You are trying to make me angry, godmamma,” said Sara, “but I shan’t be angry. There is no Countess Sermoneta, though I have looked over all the county families, and all their connections that I can make out; and papa, who knows everybody, does not know any such person, for I made him think and tell me; and the only person I can think of who does know is----” Here little Sara stopped and looked very closely and keenly in my face. “Who, child?” said I. “Not me, I am certain. Whom do you mean?” “Can’t you guess?” “Why, godmamma Sarah, to be sure,” cried Sara. “I am quite sure she knows who the Countess Sermoneta is.” “Child!” cried I, “do you know what you are saying? Your godmamma Sarah! how dare you think of such a thing!”