Monsignor Nani had merely put in an appearance that night, and Cardinal Sarno had just gone off.
Even Donna Serafina, in her usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied.

Chatting and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously, in the company of a very pretty girl.
"Oh! don't deny it, my dear fellow," continued Narcisse, "for she was really superb.

She was walking beside you, and you turned into a lane together--the Borgo Angelico, I think." Dario listened smiling, quite at his ease and incapable of denying his passionate predilection for beauty.

"No doubt, no doubt; it was I, I don't deny it," he responded.

"Only the inferences you draw are not correct." And turning towards Benedetta, who, without a thought of jealous anxiety, wore as gay a look as himself, as though delighted that he should have enjoyed that passing pleasure of the eyes, he went on: "It was the girl, you know, whom I found in tears six weeks ago.