"He was an Englishman, I suppose?"
"No. From the signore's country. Not, of course, that they are all like that," Rafaello added politely, "but the truth must be told, he was."
Now it was that my studies in Italian temperament came to my assistance quite as strongly as my knowledge of the rough fisher patois. The Italian must not be questioned nor know that anything of interest or importance hangs on his answer. Even as the Oriental he must be handled guilefully, and it was with a guileful yawn that I dismissed the subject.
"It takes an Italian to believe that wild story, Rafaello," I said. "I'm afraid your old 'Cina was teasing Lippo. It all sounds fishy to me. Are we nearly in? I feel cold."
"Indeed no, signore, it is the truth. (We shall be in in eight minutes by the signore's watch.) 'Cina will never again speak to an Englishman or—or one from the signore's country. It is a vow. She would die first. Lippo got a chance for her to stand at her spinning for a crazy Englishman to paint in a picture—good money for it, too!—and she spat in his face. Perhaps the signore will believe that?"
Again I yawned.
"Those stories mean nothing," I said, quivering with impatience. "They are but as old legends without names—and dates and places. Old women like 'Cina never can give those names and dates and places. They do not know if it was ten or twenty or fifty years ago, nor if the man were Austrian or English, or the woman Italian or French or Spanish. Pin them down, and they begin to make excuses. But I don't know why we discuss it—it is not very interesting, even if it is true. Nevertheless, and because you seem offended, Rafaello, and I merely want to show you that I am right, I will cheerfully give a good English sovereign to you or Lippo or the old woman herself, if she can so much as tell you the name of this famous nun and the name of her seducer. You will find she cannot, and then, since I am willing to wager something, you must take me for a fishing-trip free a whole day, in the felucca. Is it a bargain?"
His teeth gleamed as he swore it was a bargain and I watched him bustle off from the quay with an excitement I had not felt since my recovery. What would he discover—for that he would discover something I did not doubt. What was Margarita's mother? Some fisher girl, whose father had won an English lady's-maid with his flashing smile? Some little shopkeeper's daughter? Child, perhaps, of some sprig of nobility, caught by a pair of cool, grey English eyes? I did not know, but I felt certain that the old 'Cina did.
I cannot linger too long over this part of my story, drawn out already far beyond my idle scheme, and enough is said when I tell you that the name brought me by the childishly triumphant Rafaello opened my eyes and pursed my lips into an amazed whistle.
Our little Margarita! Here was something to startle even steady old Roger. Only a few names in Italy are worthy to stand beside the splendid if impoverished House forced by pride to place its unwedded (because undowered) daughter in the convent that needs no dot. Obscure in financial realms alone, it required little search to put my finger on the epitaph of that brother of the cruel letter (a Cardinal before his death), on the father's pictured cruel face—he scorned to eat with the mushroom Romanoffs!—on the carved door-posts where Emperors had entered in the great Italian days, even on the gorgeous sculptured mantel-piece sold by Margarita's grandfather, an impetuous younger brother at the time of his mad marriage with an English beauty, whirled from the stage, whose brightest ornament contemporary record believed she was destined to become, had he not literally carried her, panting, from the scene of her first triumph.