What she wanted exactly is more than I can tell you, as she spoke Italian altogether; and 'miladi' had the interview pretty much to herself.

But her good looks seem to have taken with this old bachelor, the justice of the peace, who eyes her as if he had an inclination to open his mind to the beauty.

Ask him in Italian, Griffin, what mare's nest he has run foul of now." "You seem to have found something to look at besides the Minerva, Signor Podesta," observed Griffin, in an undertone.

"I hope it is not Venus." "Cospetto!" grunted Vito Viti, nudging his neighbor, the vice-governatore, and nodding toward the other boat; "if that be not little Ghita, who came into our island like a comet and went out of it--to what shall I liken her sudden and extraordinary disappearance, Signor Andrea?
--" "To that of le Feu-Follet, or ze Ving-y-Ving," put in Griffin, who, now he had got the two functionaries fairly afloat, spared none of the jokes that come so easy and natural to a man-of-war's man.

"_She_ went out, too, in an 'extraordinary disappearance,' and perhaps the lady and the lugger went out together." Vito Viti muttered an answer; for by this time he had discovered that he was a very different personage on board the Proserpine from what the other had appeared to consider him while in his native island.