Arnold bent his head and listened with a curious pleasure to her little stream of words.
"It is a strange mixture of people whom you see here," she said, "a mixture, perhaps, of the most prosaic and the most romantic.

The Count Sabatini, whom you see talking to my husband, is my brother.
He is a person who lives in the flood of adventures.

He has taken part in five wars, he has been tried more than once for political offenses.

He has been banished from what is really our native country, Portugal, with a price set upon his head.

He has an estate upon which nothing grows, and a castle with holes in the roof in which no one could dwell.