The ways are all taken; they were taken from the moment he came up to our carriage that day in Villa Borghese--the second or third of her days in Rome, when, as you remember, you went off somewhere with Mr.Verver, and the Prince, who had got into the carriage with us, came home with us to tea.
They had met; they had seen each other well; they were in relation: the rest was to come of itself and as it could.

It began, practically, I recollect, in our drive.

Maggie happened to learn, by some other man's greeting of him, in the bright Roman way, from a streetcorner as we passed, that one of the Prince's baptismal names, the one always used for him among his relations, was Amerigo: which (as you probably don't know, however, even after a lifetime of ME), was the name, four hundred years ago, or whenever, of the pushing man who followed, across the sea, in the wake of Columbus and succeeded, where Columbus had failed, in becoming godfather, or name-father, to the new Continent; so that the thought of any connection with him can even now thrill our artless breasts." The Colonel's grim placidity could always quite adequately meet his wife's not infrequent imputation of ignorances, on the score of the land of her birth, unperturbed and unashamed; and these dark depths were even at the present moment not directly lighted by an inquiry that managed to be curious without being apologetic.

"But where does the connection come in ?" His wife was prompt.

"By the women--that is by some obliging woman, of old, who was a descendant of the pushing man, the make-believe discoverer, and whom the Prince is therefore luckily able to refer to as an ancestress.