"Good gracious! What heels!" said Gabrie, whom nothing escaped. "But they're quite out of fashion!"
"They're always in fashion among the nobility," explained the other, condescendingly. Then they talked of a little scandal which had arisen the day before, in consequence of two Sabbioneta ladies having quarrelled in the street.
"Wives of clerks!" said the Signorina, contemptuously. "Women of the upper aristocracy would never behave like that!"
"But," said Regina, "where have you known any women of the upper aristocracy?"
"Oh! one meets them everywhere!"
"Look here, my dear; if you were to find yourself beside a lady of the upper aristocracy, and if she deigned to look at you at all, you would be frozen with humiliation and alarm."
The other girls giggled, and the Master asked eagerly—
"Regina, I wonder do you know the Duchess Colonna of San Pietro?"
"Chi lo sa? There are no end of duchesses in Rome!"