Monsignor Lelli cast a rapid glance around him as he seated himself at the little table, while the professor discussed the ordering of the dinner with the waiter. There was nobody, however, who would be likely to know him by sight, and comment on his presence in Rome in quarters where he would prefer it to remain unknown. A few couples, already half-way through their meal, or smoking their cigars over a measure of white wine, were the only visitors to the Castello di Costantino that evening besides Professor Rossano and his party, and these were evidently students either of art or of love.
"And so," observed Professor Rossano to his guest, as the waiter retired with his order, "you have come to Rome to tell me that you mean to help my son to make an idiot of himself. I suppose you are a little short of something to occupy you at Montefiano?"
Don Agostino laughed. "There was certainly more to occupy me when I lived in Rome," he said, dryly. "As for helping Silvio to make an idiot of himself, I am inclined to think he would make a worse idiot of himself without my assistance."
"Grazie, Don Agostino!" murmured Silvio, placidly.
"I wonder when they will call you back?" the professor said; "not," he added, with a quick movement of the head towards the Vatican, "as long as—"
"Caro senatore!" interrupted Don Agostino, deprecatingly.
"Of course—of course!" returned Professor Rossano, hastily. "I forgot your soutane—I always did, in the old days, if you recollect. We will talk of something else. It is always like that—when a man insists upon his right to use his own reason and to think for himself—"
"I thought you proposed to talk of something else," suggested Giacinta, mildly, to her father.
Don Agostino looked at her and laughed.
"He is the same as he was twenty years ago—our dear professor," he said.