As at the Boccanera mansion, on the previous evening, Pierre realised that an attempt was being made to persuade him to admiration and affection.

Like a susceptible woman with secret misgivings respecting the attractive power of her beauty, Italy was all anxiety with regard to the opinion of her visitors, and strove to win and retain their love.
However, Orlando again became impassioned when he learnt that Pierre was staying at the Boccanera mansion, and he made a gesture of extreme annoyance on hearing, at that very moment, a knock at the outer door.
"Come in!" he called; but at the same time he detained Pierre, saying, "No, no, don't go yet; I wish to know--" But a lady came in--a woman of over forty, short and extremely plump, and still attractive with her small features and pretty smile swamped in fat.
She was a blonde, with green, limpid eyes; and, fairly well dressed in a sober, nicely fitting mignonette gown, she looked at once pleasant, modest, and shrewd.
"Ah! it's you, Stefana," said the old man, letting her kiss him.
"Yes, uncle, I was passing by and came up to see how you were getting on." The visitor was the Signora Sacco, niece of Prada and a Neapolitan by birth, her mother having quitted Milan to marry a certain Pagani, a Neapolitan banker, who had afterwards failed.

Subsequent to that disaster Stefana had married Sacco, then merely a petty post-office clerk.

He, later on, wishing to revive his father-in-law's business, had launched into all sorts of terrible, complicated, suspicious affairs, which by unforeseen luck had ended in his election as a deputy.

Since he had arrived in Rome, to conquer the city in his turn, his wife had been compelled to assist his devouring ambition by dressing well and opening a _salon_; and, although she was still a little awkward, she rendered him many real services, being very economical and prudent, a thorough good housewife, with all the sterling, substantial qualities of Northern Italy which she had inherited from her mother, and which showed conspicuously beside the turbulence and carelessness of her husband, in whom flared Southern Italy with its perpetual, rageful appetite.
Despite his contempt for Sacco, old Orlando had retained some affection for his niece, in whose veins flowed blood similar to his own.