"Why should you?" Livingstone gaped at him. "Only the trifling, insignificant reason that Donna Antonia is one of the greatest grandes dames in Rome, and Ambrogi one of the coming men in the government."
"Has that anything to do with me?" Neale asked with the sincerest incapacity to imagine any reason why it should. He was stricken with anticipatory boredom at the idea of having to make talk again with that disagreeable old woman.
Livingstone wondered if Crittenden had really understood from whom the invitation came. "Don't you remember meeting her? The one with the wonderfully high-bred type?"
"Oh, I remember her all right, the old lady with the predatory sharpness of beak and claw that's called aristocratic," said Neale, trying to get a rise out of Livingstone. That was usually easy enough, but he was now too genuinely concerned to defend his standards. "Now, Crittenden," he said, laying down his napkin and speaking from his heart, "to seem not to wish to continue the acquaintance of a lady who makes a civil advance—it simply isn't done!"
"Oh, go on!" said Neale, laughing at the idea. "Much she'd care what an impecunious American in a pension does or doesn't do!"
Livingstone had recovered himself enough to reflect that Neale's refusal would not at all hinder his own acceptance—in fact, on the contrary—"Well, well, no matter," he said with a change of manner, "perhaps you're right. Without a knowledge of the language, conversation in a small group is rather—Five o'clock, did you say, Miss Allen?"
"Yes, five," she answered. She went on, with a manner suddenly gay, "Perceive the difference in human fate. At five you will be taking tea with personages, and I shall be scurrying to take a belated music lesson."
"Why at that hour?" inquired Livingstone.
"I've put it off to help Eugenia get settled here. For she's coming over, bag and baggage, Joséphine and Mlle. Tollet, to live with us for a while. Isn't that jolly?"
Livingstone was visibly affected. He flushed a little, and cleared his throat before he asked with a careful reassumption of his usual airy manner, "Might I perhaps, if it is not indiscreet to ask, be permitted to breathe out upon the air a request to be informed what possible reason any one can have for leaving the golden bath-tubs (if I may so express myself) of the Grand Hotel, and sojourning at the respectable but hardly luxurious Pensione Oldham?"