"Quite delightful," replied Siegburg, thinking to himself: "How am I to get out of this?" when suddenly the absurdity of the thing came upon him afresh, for he heard the baroness once more: "Good morning, Count, what luck!" and at the same moment she bore down on no less a man than Sempaly, who had just come down the sunlit steps, and was crossing the Piazza lost in sullen meditation. "I beg your pardon," he muttered somewhat startled, "I really did not recognize you," and he gazed helplessly into the distance as though he looked for a rescue. But the baroness went on:
"I am so delighted to have met you--I have a particular request to make: could you not procure me admission to the Farnesina? The Duke di Ripalda is said to be all powerful...."
"I am sorry to say it is quite im----"
But at this instant a party of foreigners caught Sempaly's eye--two young ladies with a maid. The two girls, tall and straight as pine-trees, both remarkably handsome and dressed in neatly-fitting English linen dresses, were eagerly bargaining with an Italian who had embroidered cambric trimmings for sale, and they seemed to think it a delightful adventure to buy something in the street.
"Two charming girls! surely I know them," cried Madame Wolnitzka. "Are they not the Jatinskys?"
One of the young ladies, looking up, called out: "Nicki, Nicki!" half across the Piazza, with the frank audacity of people who have grown up in the belief that the world was created expressly for their use.
"Excuse me," said Sempaly with a bow to the baroness, "my cousins ..." and without more ado he made his escape.
"How long have you been here? Where are you staying?"
"We arrived this morning--Hotel de Londres--mamma wrote to you at once to the embassy ... Ah, here is another Austrian!" for Siegburg had contrived to join them. "Rome is but a suburb of Vienna after all! But tell me, who on earth were that old fortune-teller and her extraordinary daughter to whom you were both devoting yourselves so attentively?"
The Wolnitzky trio had in the meantime moved away. The baroness very gracious, Slawa very haughty, as became the living representative of the Apollo Belvedere--past the two handsome girls and down the Via Condotti. Suddenly Baroness Wolnitzka stopped: