An hour later Castiglione was admitted to the little house in Via Belsiana by a small man with eyes like a ferret and reddish hair, who shut the street door at once but did not seem inclined to let the visitor pass beyond the narrow hall without some further formality.
‘The club is not open yet,’ he said, civilly enough. ‘You probably do not know the hours, as this is the first time you have been here, though you have the pass words.’
Castiglione understood that it was the doorkeeper’s business to know the faces of those who frequented the place. He gave the man twenty francs by way of making acquaintance.
‘Thank you,’ said the fellow, who had not failed to notice that the pocket-book from which the notes were produced was well filled. ‘I presume you wish to join the club, sir?’
He knew his business and was a judge of men at first sight; a glance had assured him that the newcomer was an officer in civilian’s clothes, and was therefore perfectly eligible to the ‘club.’
Castiglione only hesitated for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he answered.‘I should like to see the proprietor.’
‘The treasurer, sir,’ said the man, correcting him politely, but with some emphasis, ‘is upstairs. If you will kindly step into the reading-room I will ask whether he can see you. I believe he has just finished his breakfast.’
Castiglione followed him through a long passage that turned to the left, and the man unlocked the door of a room that smelt of stale cigarette smoke. It was dark, but in a moment the doorkeeper turned up a number of electric lights. The walls were full of mirrors, and the furniture was of the description which must be supposed to suit the taste of the wicked, as it is only found in their favourite resorts. There was a vast amount of gilding, red plush and sky-blue satin, and the table was covered with dark green cotton velvet, fastened to the edges with gilt nails, below which hung a green and pink fringe.
As the place was a reading-room it was natural that there should be something in it to read. The literature was on the table, and consisted of a new railway guide, a small framed and glazed price-list of ‘refreshments,’ in which ‘Cognac’ was offered for the modest sum of twenty-five francs the bottle, and an old number of a disreputable illustrated paper.
Castiglione was not familiar with low places of any sort, and he looked about him with surprised disgust. He was not left to himself very long; the door opened and a broad-shouldered man with a white face entered and shut it behind him. He wore a dark morning coat, very well cut, and the fashionable collar and tie, but he smelt of patchouli and his light hair curled on his forehead.Castiglione felt an instant desire to throw him out, and would certainly have done so at sight if the man had appeared in his own rooms.
‘Good morning. You wish to become a member of the club? Yes? A little formality is necessary. The committee, which I usually represent, decides upon the eligibility of candidates. There is no election, no subscription, and no entrance fee, so that it is a mere form.’
Castiglione watched the man attentively during this speech, which was delivered in a glib and oily manner, and he wondered to what nation the keeper of the gambling-hell belonged, for he had never seen a specimen of the breed before, though it flourishes from Port Said and Constantinople to San Francisco by way of Paris, London, and New York. Like the cholera, it appears to have its origin in the East. The specimens speak every language under the sun with equal fluency and correctness, but always with a slightly foreign accent, and they are neither Christians, Jews, nor Turks, but infidels of some other kind. He who has not had business with a Levantine blackleg or a Hindu money-lender does not guess what guile dwells in the human heart.
Castiglione looked at the ‘treasurer’ and sat down on a gilt chair. The man followed his example, and they faced each other with the table between them.
‘Yes,’ said the Captain, as if agreeing to the conditions of membership, which indeed seemed extremely easy to fulfil,‘I quite understand. But before joining your club I should like to ask for a little information. I am told that the members sometimes play games of chance. Am I right?’
‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘they do.’
‘Just so. I am an officer, as you may have guessed. Now, in the other clubs to which I belong, you must be aware that we generally play with counters, and that we settle once a week. Is that the practice in your club, too?’
The treasurer smiled. Castiglione thought his face was like a mask of Mephistopheles modelled in whitish ice-cream.
‘No. We play only for cash here.’
‘A very good way, too,’ said Castiglione in a tone of approval. ‘But I will suppose a case. If, for instance, a member of the club loses all the cash he has brought with him, and if it is rather late in the evening, and he wishes to go on playing in the hope of winning back something, is there no way by which he can borrow a little money without going home to get it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ answered the treasurer, falling into the snare. ‘When the committee is quite sure that a member is able to pay we are always glad to accommodate him with whatever he needs.’
‘I see! That is just as convenient as our system of counters. The member merely signs a receipt for the money, I suppose, and settles at the end of the week.’
‘Not exactly. The committee prefers a stamped draft at eight days, and charges a small interest. You see an accident might happen to the member——’
‘Quite so,’ interrupted Castiglione,‘and the draft protects the club, of course. There is only one more case about which I should like to ask. Suppose, for instance, that the member in question did not live in Rome, and that you did not know much about him. He might be a rich foreigner, who had joined for a few days, and though he might have come to the end of his cash, he might have something very valuable about him, such as a handsome diamond or ruby. Does the committee make an exception for him and accept anything of that sort as security?’
‘Occasionally,’ replied the treasurer, ‘it does.’
‘Yes,’ said Castiglione in a thoughtful tone, leaning back in his chair with his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his overcoat. ‘The committee lends money on valuables. That is very convenient.’
He glanced at the treasurer, who was smoking a huge Egyptian cigarette, which he held with his left hand, while the fingers of his right played a noiseless little tattoo on the green cotton velvet of the table; they were white and unhealthy-looking, and loaded with rings.
‘The object of the committee,’ said the man, ‘is to meet the wishes of the members as far as possible, and to study their convenience.’
‘As in the case of Orlando Schmidt,’ observed Castiglione, keeping his eye on the treasurer’s right hand.
The fingers at once stopped playing the noiseless tattoo and lay quite still, though the treasurer gave no other sign of intelligence; but that alone might mean a good deal.
‘Who is Orlando Schmidt?’ he asked, apparently unmoved.
‘Surely you remember him,’ answered Castiglione. ‘You cannot have already forgotten Orlando Schmidt, and Carlo Pozzi of Palermo, and Paolo Pizzuti of Messina!’
The treasurer’s face did not change, but his right hand moved and disappeared below the edge of the green velvet to get at his pistol. Castiglione was ready, and was too quick for him.
‘Keep your hands on the table and don’t call, or I’ll fire,’ he said sternly.
The treasurer looked down the barrel of a full-sized army revolver, and beyond it he saw Castiglione’s eyes and resolute jaw. There is one point in which the breed to which he belonged does not resemble that of the European adventurer; it is a breed of cowards always ready with firearms but never able to face them. Moreover, Castiglione had the advantage.
‘Don’t shoot!’ cried the man in manifest terror.
‘Sign this or I shall,’ answered Castiglione, not lowering his revolver. With the other hand he pushed across the table a sheet of paper on which he had previously written something; he then took a fountain pen from an inner pocket and laid it before the treasurer. ‘Sign,’ he said.
The treasurer offered no resistance, and his fingers shook visibly as he took up the pen and bent over the paper.
‘Under protest,’ he said feebly.
‘If you write anything but your own name I will kill you. I’m watching the point of the pen. Never mind reading what is there. That is my affair. Your business is not to be shot. Don’t sign an assumed name either, or I’ll pull the trigger.’
In sheer terror of his life the man wrote his own name, or at all events the one he went by in his business: ‘Rodolfo Blosse.’
‘You have lost the money you lent to Orlando Schmidt,’ said Castiglione, withdrawing the paper, and quietly waving it to and fro to dry the signature, ‘but you have the advantage of being a live man.’
The revolver did not change its position.
‘You seem to think there are no laws in your country,’ said the treasurer, who was afraid to move.
‘On the contrary we have excellent ones, many of which are made for people like you. Now I am going. I shall walk slowly backwards to the door, and if you move before you hear it shut after me you will never move again. Stay where you are, facing the table, and keep both hands on it.’
All doors in the resorts of the wicked have good locks, and Castiglione turned the key after him and went back to the street entrance, where the ferret-eyed porter was waiting.
‘Always after three o’clock, is it not?’ Castiglione asked carelessly.
The man nodded as he let him out.
‘Yes, sir,’ he answered respectfully, thinking of the twenty francs he had just received from the new member.
Castiglione walked briskly to the Piazza di Spagna, and then slackened his pace and drew a long breath before he lit a cigar, and repeated to himself the words that were written on the paper in his pocket. He walked slowly home, and when he was in his own room he spread the sheet out and wrote below Rodolfo Blosse’s signature: ‘Witness,Baldassare del Castiglione,Piedmont Lancers.’ Then he folded the sheet again, placed it in an envelope, which he sealed and addressed to the ‘Reverend Father Bonaventura of the Capuchins.’
He got into his uniform again, and having placed the envelope in the inner pocket of his tunic, he went to see his colonel, to whom he had telephoned before going to Via Belsiana, asking to be received on urgent business at three in the afternoon. The great clock in the hall rang the Westminster chimes as he entered; it was a remembrance of the time when Casalmaggiore had been military attaché at the Italian Embassy in London.
He gave Castiglione an enormous Havana as they sat down by the fire, and he lit one himself and offered to have Turkish coffee made. Castiglione had forgotten to eat anything since he had come in from riding in the morning, and he accepted gladly.
‘Is it about that mare?’ asked the Duca when he had rung and given the order.
‘No, not this time.’ Castiglione laughed. ‘I have come for advice in an affair of honour.’
‘Oh!’ The Colonel seemed annoyed. ‘What a nuisance!’ he observed with some emphasis.‘Wait till the man has brought the coffee. Meanwhile, about that other matter—you have heard of my last offer?’
The Count of Montalto’s Andalusian mare happened to be the only thing, animate or inanimate, which the Duca di Casalmaggiore wanted and could not get; for he did not even hanker after promotion. There was not an officer in his regiment, old or young, whom he had not employed in some piece of diplomacy in the hope of getting possession of the coveted animal, and he began talking about her at once, showing little inclination to listen to Castiglione’s story, even when the servant had come and gone and they were drinking their coffee. He quite ignored the fact that Castiglione and Montalto were not on speaking terms, or he pretended to do so, for which the younger man was, on the whole, grateful to him.
‘I am very sorry to change the subject,’ said the Captain, at last, ‘but this affair of mine is rather urgent.’
‘I had quite forgotten it! Pray excuse me and tell me what the matter is.’
The Colonel settled himself with a bored expression and listened. He greatly disliked duelling in his regiment, and invariably hindered an encounter if he could. In his young days a great misfortune had happened to him; in a senseless quarrel he had severely wounded a brother officer, who had become consumptive in consequence and had died two years later.
He listened patiently to Castiglione’s story, and then delivered himself of a general prediction.
‘That infernal cousin of mine will be the death of one of us yet!’ He sent an inch of heavy ash from his cigarinto the fire with a vicious flick. ‘Why the devil did you go to see her?’ he asked, very unreasonably.
Castiglione smiled but said nothing. He knew well enough that Teresa Crescenzi had tried to marry Casalmaggiore, and that the latter had been forced to make a regular defence.
‘There’s only one way to deal with such women,’ he observed. ‘Marry them and separate within six months. Then you need never see them again! What are you going to do?’
‘That is precisely what I have come to ask you, as my chief. The honour of the regiment is the only question that matters to me. I shall do whatever you advise. De Maurienne expects to hear from me after five o’clock. As for the cause of the quarrel, Donna Teresa must be quite mad.’
‘Mad?’ Casalmaggiore laughed. ‘You don’t know her! Don’t you see that it is all a trick to make de Maurienne compromise her by fighting a duel for her, and that he will be forced to marry her afterwards, for decency’s sake?’
Castiglione looked at his colonel with sincere admiration, for such tortuous reasoning could never have taken shape in his own rather simple brain, though he now saw that no other explanation of Teresa’s conduct was possible. The Duca smiled and pushed his delicate grey moustaches from his lips with the dry tip of his cigar, which he never by any chance placed between them. He seemed able to draw in the smoke by some mysterious means without even touching the tobacco, forin smoking, as in everything else, he was a thorough epicure.
‘I hope,’ he said, his words following the fresh cloud he blew, ‘that de Maurienne will at least have the sense to act as I suggested just now. In France he can do better. He can be divorced without difficulty. Fancy the satisfaction of divorcing Teresa! Can you see her expression? And she would be “a defenceless woman” again in no time. Of all the offensive forms of defencelessness!’
He laughed softly to himself.
‘Meanwhile,’ said Castiglione, trying to bring him back to the subject in hand, ‘I am afraid something very disagreeable may happen.’
‘What is that?’ asked the Colonel, following his own amusing thoughts and still smiling.
‘You see, I have never fought a duel, and as I am not inclined to let de Maurienne run me through, I might kill him. There would be very serious trouble if an Italian officer killed a French diplomatist, I suppose, not to mention the fact that I should have to spend a couple of years in a fortress.’
‘You are afraid you might upset the European concert, are you?’ The Colonel seemed much amused at the idea. ‘But it is all nonsense, Castiglione. There is not going to be any fight.’
‘But the man called me a coward to my face, Colonel! What am I to do?’
‘Go home and go to bed. It’s the only safe place when Teresa is on the war-path. If you want an excuse, I’ll put you under arrest in your rooms, but that seems useless. Go home and go to bed, I tell you!’
‘It’s rather early,’ objected Castiglione, smiling. ‘And meanwhile Monsieur de Maurienne will be sitting up waiting for my friends.’
‘Dear Captain,’ said Casalmaggiore, ‘I have not the least idea what Monsieur de Maurienne will do. If I say that I will be responsible for your honour as for my own, and for that of the Piedmont Lancers, and if I tell you that there will be no duel, Monsieur de Maurienne may sit up all night, for weeks and weeks, so far as you are concerned.’
‘That is a very different matter,’ answered Castiglione gravely. ‘I have nothing more to say. If my honour can be safer anywhere than in my own keeping, it will be so in your hands. Do you really wish me to stay at home this evening?’
‘Yes, unless you want a couple of days’ leave, though we have a general order from headquarters not to allow officers or men leave to go further than three hours by railway. Trouble is expected owing to these strikes, and we shall probably be doing patrol duty next week! You may have two days if you like.’
‘Thank you, no. I’ll go home.’
Castiglione made a movement to get up.
‘No, no!’ objected Casalmaggiore. ‘I have not told you everything about that mare yet. Stay a little longer.’
‘Certainly; with pleasure. But first, if it’s not indiscreet, may I ask how in the world you are going to settle my affair?’
‘You may ask, Castiglione,’ replied the Colonel with great gravity, ‘but it is beyond my power to answer you; for I give you my word of honour that I have not the slightest idea. Montalto knows perfectly well,’ he continued without a break and in precisely the same tone of voice, ‘that I will pay twenty thousand francs for the mare whenever he likes, and that’s a large price in Italy.’
After that Castiglione made no further attempt to talk about de Maurienne, and his colonel kept him till after four o’clock.
Maria was silent and preoccupied throughout the day, and did not attempt to rouse Montalto from his apathy. He made no reference to the letters, though he gave some thought to the subject in the privacy of his study, and practically decided to consult the police on the morrow, since no other course suggested itself to his not very active imagination.
One of Giuliana Parenzo’s horses was lame, and another had a bad cold, and she telephoned to ask if Maria would take her for a drive and make a few visits with her. Having no ready excuse, Maria agreed to the proposal on condition that Giuliana should not object to waiting for her a few minutes outside the Church of the Capuchins. She had ascertained from her maid, who was a Roman, that twenty-three-and-a-half o’clock meant sunset at all times of the year, which seemed to her a clumsy way of reckoning, the more so as she had to make further inquiries in order to ascertain the hour at which the sun actually went down. It turned out to be about a quarter before five, but as she was not quite sure, she thought it best to go at half-past four. If Padre Bonaventura had not come in she could wait for him. Giuliana probably had some visit to make at one of the modern hotels in the vicinity, for she and her husband necessarily knew many foreigners.
Accordingly, at half-past four, when the brown front of the old church was just beginning to glow in the evening light, the Countess’s carriage stopped before the steps. Giuliana had said that she preferred to wait, as she had nothing to do in the neighbourhood, but, to Maria’s surprise, she now also got out.
‘It is a long time since I was here,’ she explained, ‘so I have changed my mind. I shall not be in your way if I stay near the door.’
‘In the way? How absurd!’ Maria laughed a little as she went up the steps.
They parted just inside the door; Giuliana knelt down by a straw chair on the right, while Maria went up the church diagonally towards the left, in the direction of the confessional which Padre Bonaventura usually occupied.
She found him in the last chapel on the left, by the door of the sacristy, in the act of shaking hands with Castiglione, who was evidently taking leave of him. Coming upon them so suddenly when the evening glow through the upper windows made the church very light, it was out of the question to draw back into the shadow. The monk saw her first, but Castiglione turned his head a second later, and the three were standing together.
Maria drew herself up very straight in the effort to check a cry of surprise, and Castiglione made rather a stiff military bow; but she saw his eyes in the rosy light, and he saw hers. A moment later he was gone, and her ears followed the musical little jingle of his spurs as he went down the nave towards the door, near which Giuliana Parenzo was kneeling.
But while she listened she was looking into the monk’s face, and her own was pale and had a frightened expression.
‘It could not be helped,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I did not know he was coming, and you are here early. If there is any fault it is mine.’
Maria listened in silence. He held out the sealed envelope Castiglione had brought him, and she saw the well-known writing.
‘This is addressed to me,’ continued Padre Bonaventura, ‘but I give it to you unopened. It contains a document which will relieve you of all anxiety about your letters.’
‘Already!’
‘Yes. He has lost no time. He is a man of action.’
The monk could not withhold a word of admiration, and Maria felt the warmth in her cheeks.
‘Indeed he is!’ she answered in a low voice. ‘Thank him for me!’
‘I have thanked him. That is enough, and we may never meet again.’
‘I may at least be grateful to you,’ Maria said.
‘My share has been small. I must leave you now, for there is some one waiting to confess.’
He left the chapel, but Maria remained a few moments longer. When she was sure that no one could see her she slipped the sealed envelope inside her frock, for she did not like to trust it to the little bag in which she carried her cards, her handkerchief, and her money. She had almost forgotten Giuliana till she met her standing by thedoor, and saw the look of surprise and reproach in her eyes.
They went down the steps side by side in silence, and neither spoke till the carriage was moving again.
‘I really think you might choose some other place in which to meet,’ said Giuliana at last.
Maria had expected something of the sort from her impeccable friend.
‘We met by accident, and we did not speak,’ she answered quietly, for she knew that appearances were against her.
‘I did not know that he ever entered a church,’ returned Giuliana, who was well acquainted with Castiglione’s opinions in matters of religion.
‘Very rarely—at least, when I knew him.’
Maria was not inclined to say more, and Giuliana thought the explanation anything but sufficient. Maria had always been very truthful, but when unassailable virtue is suspicious it always goes to extremes, and tells us that the devil is everywhere, whereas, since he is usually described as an individual, and by no means as divine, it is hard to see how he can be in two places at once. Maria was aware of her friend’s state of mind, but was too much occupied with her own thoughts to pay any more attention to it after having told the truth. The sealed envelope that came from Castiglione’s hand lay inside her frock, upon her neck, somewhat to the left, and it was burning her and sending furious little thrills through her; yet it would have to lie there at least another hour while she made visits with Giuliana.
She left the latter at her home at last, and they had never parted so coldly in the course of their long friendship. When Maria was alone in her carriage, in the dark, she opened her frock again and took out the envelope and put it into her bag, for she could not bear to let it touch her any longer, and the recollection of Castiglione’s eyes had not faded yet.
To drive the vision of him away she thought of Giuliana, and reflected upon the extreme foolishness of her friend’s suspicions. If the two had meant to meet in the chapel, though only for an instant, it would have been easy to warn Castiglione that Giuliana was in the church, and that he must wait for her to go away before showing himself.
The carriage descended the Via Nazionale on the way home, and had gone a hundred yards further when it stopped short, to Maria’s surprise, and at the same moment she saw a villainous face almost flattened against the glass. Telemaco turned the horses suddenly to the right and drove quickly along the Piazza dei Santi Apostoli, which was almost deserted. The Countess dropped the front window of the brougham and asked what was the matter.
‘There is a riot in Piazza di Venezia, Excellency. They are throwing stones.’
Maria raised the glass again. It was only another strike, she thought, or an anarchist’s funeral, and the carriage would go round by another way. Such disturbances were frequent that winter, but never seemed to have any serious consequences.
When she was at last alone in her boudoir she cut the envelope and spread out the sheet it contained. It was strange to be reading something written in Castiglione’s handwriting, and to feel that it was her duty to read it.
This was what she read:—
‘I, the undersigned, proprietor of a gambling-house in Via Belsiana, and representing Orlando Schmidt, the absconding steward of the Count of Montalto, and my accomplices calling themselves Carlo Pozzi of Palermo and Paolo Pizzuti of Messina, do hereby declare and confess that the photographs of seven letters, more or less, purporting to be written by Her Excellency the Countess of Montalto, by means of which I, and my aforesaid accomplices, have criminally attempted to extort money from her, are reproduced from forgeries executed by the aforesaid Orlando Schmidt, who had surreptitiously obtained specimens of Her Excellency’s handwriting. Rome, this eleventh day of January 1906.‘Rodolfo Blosse.‘Witness:Baldassare del Castiglione,‘Piedmont Lancers.’
‘I, the undersigned, proprietor of a gambling-house in Via Belsiana, and representing Orlando Schmidt, the absconding steward of the Count of Montalto, and my accomplices calling themselves Carlo Pozzi of Palermo and Paolo Pizzuti of Messina, do hereby declare and confess that the photographs of seven letters, more or less, purporting to be written by Her Excellency the Countess of Montalto, by means of which I, and my aforesaid accomplices, have criminally attempted to extort money from her, are reproduced from forgeries executed by the aforesaid Orlando Schmidt, who had surreptitiously obtained specimens of Her Excellency’s handwriting. Rome, this eleventh day of January 1906.
‘Rodolfo Blosse.
‘Witness:Baldassare del Castiglione,‘Piedmont Lancers.’
Castiglione had not hesitated to force the blackmailer to declare the letters to be forgeries. Maria guessed why he had done that, as she sat reading the paper a second time. He had suspected Schmidt of having really forged such words as she would never have written, she thought; and he had in some way extracted the truth from the man who signed the paper. In that case her danger had been even greater than she had imagined. What abominationsmight not have been forged in her handwriting! Yes, Castiglione was a man of action, indeed, as the monk had said. Poor Montalto had hesitated and done nothing for days, and in a little while some vile newspaper would have scattered broadcast a scandal from which no recovery would have been possible. But within twenty-four hours after she had spoken to Padre Bonaventura the man who loved her had found the chief criminal and had made him sign a document, on the strength of which no judge would hesitate to send the whole gang to penal servitude. ‘Witness, Baldassare del Castiglione’; the well-loved name rang in her ears, the name of a man on whose honour there was no slur before the world, nor any in her inmost thoughts now; a name after which every officer and non-commissioned officer in the regiment would write his own blindfold, if need were, because they all knew him and trusted him.
She folded the paper slowly, letting her fingers linger where his had touched it last, and she put it back into the cut envelope and looked at the seal. It was the same he had used long ago, in the dark ages of her life—a plain, old-fashioned shield with his simple arms and the motto in Latin:Si omnes ego non.
Maria knew whence it was taken, with but a slight change. There was a mark in the margin of her old missal at the Gospel for Wednesday in Holy Week opposite the words, and the whole line read, ‘Though all forsake Thee, I will not forsake Thee.’ She had never had the courage to erase that mark, not even in the yearswhen she had deceived herself. Year after year, when the day came round, she had read the noble words; and many times she had read them bitterly, thinking of what followed afterwards and of him who, having spoken them, denied not once but thrice, and with an oath. She read them now on the dark wax, under the bright light, and after a little while she pressed the seal gently to her lips, the seal that held the motto she loved, not the paper he had touched.
‘In all honour,’ she said gravely, under her breath.
Soon after five o’clock the Duca di Casalmaggiore sent in his card to Monsieur de Maurienne. The diplomatist was engaged in examining an etching by Robetta with a huge lens, under a strong light, and was too much interested to desist until the Colonel was actually in the room. He received his visitor, whom he knew very well, with that formal courtesy which is considered becoming when an affair of honour is to be discussed. He had expected a couple of officers of Castiglione’s rank, and had asked two of his own friends to hold themselves in readiness if he telephoned for them. He was surprised that only one representative should appear for his adversary, and that he should be no less a personage than the Colonel of the regiment.
Casalmaggiore did not even seem inclined to behave with the solemn gravity required on such an occasion. He sat down on a comfortable chair and laid his laced cap unceremoniously upon a little table he found at his elbow, instead of holding it in his hand and sitting bolt upright with his sabre between his knees. De Maurienne thought that Italians took duelling in much too free and easy a way, and he stiffened a little and sat very straight. He was not prepared for what was coming. Casalmaggiore spoke in French.
‘I shall begin by making a little apology,’ he said, leaning back and folding his gloved hands.
De Maurienne’s eyebrows went up, high above the gold rims of his glasses, and he spoke in a politely icy tone.
‘Indeed! I cannot see how any can be required from your side, under the circumstances!’
‘Not from our friend Castiglione,’ answered the Colonel, ‘but on my own behalf. I must really beg your pardon beforehand for what I am going to say—always placing myself entirely at your disposal if I should unintentionally offend you. Is that quite clear?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Thank you. You are the victim of an unworthy trick, my dear de Maurienne. I am going to take the liberty of explaining exactly what has happened to you, by giving you the details of what had just occurred when you entered Donna Teresa Crescenzi’s drawing-room.’
De Maurienne looked at his visitor in surprise, and not without some suspicion.
‘Donna Teresa is a connection of mine,’ observed Casalmaggiore, ‘and I know her extremely well. What I have to say about her should not offend you. Castiglione came to me this afternoon and told me the story. I know him to be a perfectly truthful and honourable man, and I know that he is incapable of fear. Indeed, he does not know what fear is.’
‘Allow me to say,’ said de Maurienne,‘that with us, in France, matters of this kind are discussed between the friends of the principals. Is the practice different in your country?’
‘Not at all. But this is quite another sort of affair. I, personally, give you my word that what I am going to tell you is what really happened. You will understand that if I, as colonel, give my word for that of one of my officers, I am fully aware of the responsibility I undertake.’
‘This changes the aspect of things, I admit,’ said de Maurienne gravely, but less coldly.
He had never been placed in such a position, nor had he ever heard of just such a case.
‘Practically,’ continued the Colonel, ‘it transfers all the responsibility to me. I know Castiglione to be a man of accurate memory, and as soon as he was gone I wrote down precisely what he had told me. Here it is.’
He took out his note-book, found the place, and read aloud a precise account of what had passed between Teresa Crescenzi and Castiglione up to the moment when de Maurienne had entered the room. De Maurienne listened attentively.
‘My cousin—her father was my mother’s cousin—is a very ingenious woman,’ concluded Casalmaggiore with a smile, and pocketing his notes again. ‘I am sorry to say that I have known her to exhibit her ingenuity in even more surprising ways than this.’
‘She told me that Castiglione had accused her of meeting me in an equivocal place,’ said de Maurienne.
‘No doubt. We are rather afraid of her in Rome, and very much so in the family.’
‘What is her object in all this?’
‘I hope I do not offend you by saying that my good cousin has determined to marry you,’ answered Casalmaggiore, still smiling faintly. ‘I should not expect you to share her enthusiasm on that point. It would not be precisely tactful of me to ask if I am right, but I shall be so free as to take it for granted. That being the case, you cannot fail to see that if she led you into a duel on her account, she would thereby be forcing you to compromise her to such an extent that many persons would think you ought to marry her as a matter of honour. If a man even distantly related to her, such as I myself, for instance, took up a quarrel for her, there would be at least the excuse of relationship, but there is not the shadow of a reason why you should do such a thing, even if there were any cause! That is all I have to say. I repeat that I am at your disposal, if I have said anything to offend you.’
Monsieur de Maurienne was perfectly brave, and though he was no duellist, and not even a good fencer, he would have faced the first swordsman in Europe without turning a hair; it is therefore no aspersion on his courage to say that he was afraid to marry Teresa Crescenzi, though he thought her very pretty and amusing, if a little vivid. The point explained by the Colonel had not escaped him either, and he had spent a very unpleasant afternoon.
He considered the matter for a few moments before he spoke.
‘You have done me a great service,’ he said.‘I have known Castiglione several months, and, without any disrespect to Donna Teresa, I must say that I was not fully persuaded of the exactness of what she told me. I thought your cousin’s manner a little strained—let us put it in that way.’
‘It is impossible to speak of a lady with greater consideration,’ said Casalmaggiore.
‘But I was placed in a difficult position, and very suddenly. Such things happen now and then. Perhaps, in the same situation, you yourself, or Castiglione, would have acted as hastily as I did.’
‘Quite so. Even more hastily, perhaps.’
The Colonel was thinking that under the circumstances he would have told Donna Teresa exactly what he thought of her, taking advantage of relationship to be extremely plain.
‘Castiglione,’ continued de Maurienne, ‘behaved in the most honourable and forbearing way. I take great pleasure in saying that I sincerely regret the offensive expressions I used, and that I entertain the highest respect for him. Will you permit me? I will write him a short note, by your kindness.’
‘Thank you. It will be much appreciated.’
A quarter of an hour later Castiglione’s orderly received another shock to his nerves. When he answered the bell and saw his colonel on the landing, resplendent in a perfectly new uniform, the trooper flattened himself at attention against the open door with such precision and violence that the back of his head struck the panel with a crack like a pistol shot, his eyes almost started out of his head, and he was completely speechless.
The Captain was in his sitting-room, poring over a new German book on the functions of cavalry in war, and a well-worn dictionary lay at his elbow. He started to his feet in surprise.
‘I think you will find this satisfactory,’ said Casalmaggiore, handing him de Maurienne’s note and sitting down.
Castiglione read the contents quickly, still standing.
‘What in the world did you tell him?’ he asked in amazement.
‘The truth,’ answered the Colonel, suppressing a slight yawn, for the whole affair had bored him excessively. ‘It is amazing what miracles the truth will perform where everything else fails! If Teresa could only realise that, she would simplify her existence. As you have not gone to bed, in spite of my advice, come and dine with me. I’ve got another idea about that mare, and I should like to talk it over with you. I think it will succeed.’
Castiglione laughed a little.
‘I will come with pleasure,’ he said. ‘What is the new idea? I thought you developed the subject pretty fully this afternoon.’
‘This has occurred to me since,’ answered Casalmaggiore gravely. He was silent for a moment, pursuing his favourite scheme. ‘Castiglione,’ he said, rising suddenly and looking at his watch, ‘if you ever let Teresa guess that I have interfered with her plans, I’ll court-martial you!’
‘Never fear!’ The Captain laughed again.
‘As for leave, I’m glad you would not take your two days. There is a general strike again, and we shall certainly have some patrol work to do, if nothing worse. After you had left me I got another message from headquarters.’
Two days later Montalto informed Maria after luncheon that he had an appointment with the Chief of Police at three o’clock, and had decided to lay the whole matter before him and to leave it altogether in his hands. It had taken Montalto almost a week to reach this final decision, and Maria had devoutly hoped that he would never act at all. She thought it would be like him to put off doing anything till he convinced himself that the blackmailer’s letter had been an idle threat, never to be put into execution; but she was mistaken in this, for Montalto never left quite undone what he believed that it was his duty to do, and in the present case, though he had been so slow, he was really in much greater apprehension of a scandal than Maria understood.
The people who are the hardest to live with are often those who speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. It is never possible to be sure what they are hiding from us out of prudence or shyness, prudishness or delicacy; it is the most difficult thing in the world to find out precisely what they know and what they do not know, without putting direct questions which would be little short of insulting.
Montalto was such a man. His power of keeping his own counsel without telling an untruth was amazing; andhis own counsel was not always wise. It was this characteristic of his which had twice suggested to Maria, in moments of despair, that he had come back to revenge himself upon her by systematically torturing her to death. Mediocrity is never so exasperating as when it affects to be inscrutable.
‘I have not thought it best to talk much with you about the letters, my dear,’ Montalto said. ‘In such cases it is the man’s business to act.’
Maria smiled faintly. She foresaw much useless trouble if he carried out the intention he had been so long in formulating, though she knew nothing of the ways of the police. For two whole days she had lived in the certainty that she was safe, and the thought that the whole story was to be told again, to a stranger and by her husband, was very disturbing. On the other hand it seemed all but impossible to show Montalto the blackmailer’s confession, written in Castiglione’s handwriting, and signed by him as a witness.
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘since it is already so near the eighth day, we had better wait until they write a second time, as the letter said they would.’
Montalto looked at her in surprise, and paused in the act of reconstructing one of his Havana cigarettes.
‘Why, my dear?’ he asked.‘You yourself urged me to act, before I had time to form an opinion, and you seemed distressed because I took a day or two to think it over; and now you suddenly advise me not to act at all. This is very strange. I do not understand you.’
He waited for her to answer him, and he saw that she hesitated.
‘You must have some very good reason for changing your mind so unexpectedly,’ he said, in a discontented tone, and resumed the rolling of his cigarette.
Maria felt the difficulty of the situation, for which she was not in the least prepared; she had been very sure that he would not do anything in the matter, because she hoped that he would not.
‘Also,’ he continued, ‘why do you speak of more than one person?’
‘More than one?’
‘You said: until “they” write a second time. What reason have you to suppose that any one is concerned in this but Schmidt?’
She had been thinking of the wording of the paper, of Blosse and his ‘accomplices.’
‘The letter mentioned two other names,’ she said.
‘I have no doubt that Schmidt goes by twenty,’ returned her husband testily. ‘You know very well that Pozzi and Pizzuti both stand for Schmidt!’
He lighted his cigarette, and smoked in silence for some moments.
‘I cannot understand why you have changed your mind,’ he repeated at last. ‘You must have some reason.’
Maria attempted a little diplomacy.
‘Don’t you think a second letter, if it should come, might give a better clue for the police to work on, or might—what do they call it?—strengthen the evidence against Schmidt?’
‘There is evidence enough already to send him to penal servitude, if we can catch him,’ answered Montalto. ‘I really cannot see what more is needed!’
‘Except that—to catch him,’ suggested Maria. ‘I really think that another letter——’
‘Absurd!’ Montalto was seriously annoyed with her by this time. ‘Something has happened to make you change your mind. Am I right or not?’
Maria turned a little pale and bit her lip. But she would not tell an untruth.
‘Yes, something has happened,’ she answered.
‘What?’ The single word was pronounced with a good deal of sharpness.
Maria turned to him.
‘I would rather not tell you,’ she said gently. ‘It is quite useless for you to go to the police, for the letters will not be published.’
She spoke in a tone of perfect certainty that surprised him.
‘You seem very sure,’ he said.
‘I am quite sure.’
‘And you object to telling me why you are. Very strange!’
‘I don’t “object,” Diego. I only say I would rather not. I ask you not to question me.’
‘My dear,’ answered Montalto, ‘only reflect upon what you are saying. In the first place, you are a woman, and you may be mistaken.’
‘I am not. I assure you I am not.’
If she had been less anxious to pacify him she would have asked if men never made mistakes.
‘I confess I should like to judge of that, considering that the honour of my name is at stake,’ said her husband.
‘Your name is safe, and mine too. Please, please don’t ask me to tell you!’
‘Maria, there is some mystery about all this, and I cannot consent to let it go on. It must be cleared up. It is my duty to ask what you have done to stop the publication of those letters.’
She made a last appeal.
‘You have forgiven me so much, Diego. You have trusted me so much! I only ask you to trust me now—there is nothing to forgive!’
‘You may as well say at once that you have sent a cheque to that scoundrel,’ said Montalto angrily. ‘You have thrown it away. He still has the photographs, and as soon as he wants more money he will threaten us again. I warned you not to do that!’
Maria hoped desperately that if she remained silent he would continue in this belief. But the obstinacy of an over-conscientious person who has a ‘duty’ to perform is appalling.
‘Have you sent the money?’ he asked severely, as soon as he was sure that she did not mean to say anything in reply.
‘No.’
‘Then you are ashamed of what you have done. There is no other explanation of your silence, my dear. You yourself must see that.’
He said ‘my dear’ in a tone that exasperated her.
‘No,’ she cried vehemently, ‘I have done nothing to be ashamed of! You must find some other explanation of my silence, if you insist on having one!’
‘Your conduct is so extraordinary,’ Montalto replied, in an offended tone, ‘that I can only account for it in one way. Instead of trusting to me, you have allowed some one else to help you, and you are ashamed to tell me who the person is.’
‘I am not ashamed!’ Maria drew herself up now, and her dark eyes gleamed a little. ‘But I will not tell you!’
‘There is only one name you would be ashamed to let me hear in this matter. If you persist in your silence I shall know that you have been helped by Castiglione.’
Montalto’s eyes were a little bloodshot, and fixed themselves on hers. She did not hesitate any longer.
‘I never lied to you, and I am not ashamed of the truth,’ she answered proudly. ‘Baldassare del Castiglione has helped me.’
Until she had actually told him so, in plain words, Montalto had wished not to believe what he had guessed. His face had been changing slowly, and now she saw once more, after many years, the look it had worn when he had first accused her, and she had bowed her head. When he spoke again she remembered the tone she had not heard since then.
‘As you are not ashamed to say so, I suppose you will not mind telling me what he did.’
‘You shall see for yourself.’
She left the drawing-room, and he sat quite still duringthe few seconds that elapsed; quite still, staring at the seat that she had left. For he loved her. When she came back she stood before him. He took the paper from her hand and read it with difficulty, though he had known the handwriting well enough in old times. He read it all, to the name of the regiment after Castiglione’s signature. Then he handed back the paper.
‘I have been mad,’ he said slowly and almost mechanically.
She misunderstood him.
‘You see that I was right,’ she said. ‘Your honour is safe.’
His face changed in a way that frightened her. She thought he was choking. An instant later he sprang to his feet and left her side, pressing both his hands to his ears like a man raving. His voice rang out with a mad laugh.
‘My honour!’
Maria laid one hand on the back of the chair he had left, to steady herself, for the shock of understanding him was more than she could bear. Scarcely knowing that her lips moved she called him back.
‘Diego! Diego! Hear me!’
‘Hear you? Have I not heard?’ He turned upon her like a madman.‘Have I not heard and remembered every word you have spoken, those eight months and more? How you would tear the memory of that man from your heart? How you called God to witness that you would forget him? How you and he took an oath never to meet again? Have I not heard you, and forgiven, and believed, and trusted, and loved you like the miserable fool I am? And you ask me to hear you again? Oh, never, never! You have promised and you have lied to me, you have called God to witness and you have blasphemed, you have asked for trust and you have betrayed me with that man—and now you tell me he has saved my honour. My honour! My honour!’
Maria closed her eyes and grasped the chair. But she would not bend her head to the storm as she had bowed it long ago.
‘I am innocent. I have done none of these things.’
She could find no other words, and he would not have listened to more, for he was beside himself and began to rave again, while she stood straight and white beside the chair. Sometimes his voice was thick, as his fury choked him, sometimes it was shrill and wild, when his rage found vent. But each time, as he paused, exhausted, to draw breath, her words came to him calm and clear in the moment’s stillness.
‘I am innocent.’
His madness subsided by slow degrees, and then changed all at once, and he was again in the mood she remembered so well. He came and stood still two paces from her, his eyes all bloodshot but his face white.
‘How dare you say you are innocent?’ he asked.
She held out the envelope in which Castiglione’s writing had come to her.
‘It is addressed to my confessor, who gave it to me,’ she said.
He came nearer and steadied his eyes to read the name, for his sight was not very good.
‘Do you think such a trick as that can deceive me?’ he asked with cold scorn.
‘Send for him,’ said Maria. ‘Your carriage is at the door, for you were going out. Go and bring him here, for he will come.’
Montalto looked at her with a strange expression.
‘Go to the Capuchins,’ she said calmly. ‘Ask for Padre Bonaventura, and bring him back in the carriage. He will not refuse you.’
‘Padre Bonaventura? Old Padre Bonaventura?’ He repeated the name in a dazed tone, for he knew it well, as many Romans did.
‘Bring him here,’ Maria said. ‘He will tell you that it was he who went to Baldassare del Castiglione and asked his help and received this paper from him on the evening of the same day. He will tell you, too, that at the very moment when it was placed in his hands I came for the answer, and we met, face to face, and looked at each other; but we did not speak, and Castiglione went away at once. Giuliana Parenzo was with me, and was waiting for me inside the door; she saw him go out a moment after we had come. Will you believe her? If you still think I am not telling the truth, will you believe my confessor?’
While she was speaking she looked at him with calm and clear eyes in the serenity of perfect innocence. And all at once he broke down and cried aloud with a wail of agony.
‘Maria! What have I done?’
Then he was at her feet, his arms round her body, his face buried against her, sobbing like a woman, as she had never sobbed, rocking himself to and fro like a child, as he had rocked himself when he had first come back to her, kissing her skirt frantically. And his unmanly tears ran down upon the grey cloth.
She felt a little sick as she bent and tried to soothe him, forcing herself to lay kind hands upon his head, and then gently endeavouring to lift him to his feet, while he clasped her and implored her forgiveness in broken words. But she was very brave. He must not guess what she felt, nor feel that the hand that smoothed his hair grew cold from sheer loathing of what it touched.
There are women living who know what that is, and are brave for honour’s sake; but none are braver than Maria was on that day. She would not leave him for a moment, after that, until it was past seven o’clock. Little by little, as she talked and soothed him, she brought him back to himself, with the patience that angels have, and never need where all is peace.
She had a respite then, and Giuliana Parenzo and Monsignor Saracinesca came to dinner, which made it easier. Afterwards, too, Montalto and his friend talked as usual and argued about Church and State, and no one would have suspected that the grave and courteous host, with his old-time formalities of manner and his rather solemn face, had raved and wept and dragged himself at his wife’s feet that very afternoon.
The Marchesa was still inclined to show Maria a littlecool disapproval when she came. The younger woman felt it in the almost indifferent touch of her hand, and in the distinctly airy kiss that did not come near the cheek it was meant for. The two had not seen each other since they had gone to the Capuchin church together; but Giuliana, who was just and sensible, had made several reflections in the meantime, and had come to the conclusion that, after all, Maria and Castiglione might have met by chance, though why in the world a man who believed in nothing should happen to be in a church, and in that particular one precisely at that hour, was more than she could explain. It was very odd, but perhaps Baldassare was converted; and the good Marchesa said a little prayer, quite in earnest, asking that he might be. Possibly, she thought immediately afterwards, Maria had converted him, and she hoped this might be the case, as it would explain so many things. Giuliana herself had once attempted to influence him, out of sheer goodness of heart, long ago, and had talked religion to him in a corner after a dinner party for a whole evening, a proceeding which might have started a little gossip about any other woman. She had tried to expound the Nicene Creed to him, article by article, but just as she reached the ‘Life of the World to come’ he fell sound asleep before her eyes, after one of the most puzzling and painful experiences in his recollection, for he had been in the saddle all day at a review, and the room was so warm that it made him understand the Descent into Hell in the only sense the words had ever conveyed to him.
Confidence was presently restored between the friends and Giuliana began to talk about the news of the hour; about strikes, as regarded from the ministerial point of view; about the probability that the Ministry would fall before Lent, merely on general principles, because that seems to be the critical time of year in politics, as it is for gouty patients; and, lastly, about Teresa Crescenzi.
‘I am not given to prying into other people’s affairs,’ Giuliana said, ‘but I should really like to know the truth about her and de Maurienne.’
‘I fancy she will marry him in the end,’ observed Maria, rather indifferently, for she was still thinking of the strikes and the disturbances in the streets, and wondering whether there was any risk in sending Leone all the way to school at the Istituto Massimo every morning, though his tutor took him there and brought him home.
‘De Maurienne has left Rome very suddenly,’ said Giuliana, ‘and I am inclined to think that Teresa is to be an “unprotected widow” a little longer.’
‘She must be growing used to it!’ Maria laughed a little.
‘The French Ambassador told Sigismondo that de Maurienne had asked for leave very suddenly, and that, as he seems to think that diplomacy consists in the study of etchings, no objection had been made. Teresa is evidently furious. She says he told her that he was going to Paris in order to be present at an art sale, but that she believes he has run away from a duel. Have you not heard that?’
Giuliana looked at Maria quietly, but saw no change in the warm pallor of her friend’s face, nor the least quivering of the eyelids.
‘No,’ Maria answered, unsuspectingly. ‘I have heard nothing. Does Teresa say who it was that wanted to fight with him?’
‘Yes, but I don’t believe a word of it. She says it was Balduccio.’
‘Why in the world should he quarrel with Monsieur de Maurienne?’ Maria turned innocent eyes to meet Giuliana’s.
‘Teresa does not explain that,’ laughed the Marchesa, ‘but she darkly hints that the affair which did not come off concerned herself!’
‘How silly she is!’
Indeed, the absurdity of the story was so apparent, that Maria would not ask any more questions. She was continually doing her best to keep Castiglione out of her thoughts, and the painful scene with her husband during the afternoon made it all the harder for her. She changed the subject.
‘Giuliana,’ she asked, ‘shall you let your boys walk to school or even go in the tram while the strike lasts?’
‘Oh, yes!’ answered the Marchesa. ‘But the trams have stopped this afternoon. Have you not been out? The boys walk in the morning, for there is never any disturbance till much later. All good anarchists dine comfortably, and often too well, before they go out to howl in the streets.’
She laughed carelessly.
‘I daresay you are right,’ Maria answered. ‘I never let Leone be out in the city on foot or in trams after luncheon. Three or four times a week he rides with Diego in the Campagna, and they generally go as far as one of the city gates in a cab, but I always send Diego’s little brougham to fetch them. I’m afraid they may both catch cold in a cab after riding.’
‘Your husband is very fond of it, is he not?’
‘Yes, and he rides well, and looks well on a horse—particularly on that lovely little Andalusian mare he brought from Spain.’
‘The one the Duca di Casalmaggiore is so anxious to buy?’ inquired Giuliana.
‘The Colonel of the Piedmont Lancers?’ Maria wondered whether her friend was trying to lead the conversation back to Castiglione again. ‘I did not know he wanted her.’
‘My dear! He thinks of nothing else! He would like to make it an affair of State. The other day he came to see Sigismondo and talked about the mare for three-quarters of an hour, trying to induce him to use his influence with me, to use my influence with you, to use your influence with your husband, to induce him to sell the Andalusian for twenty thousand francs! I think he must be quite mad! It is an enormous price for a saddle-horse, and he has offered it through half a dozen people. I wonder that Diego should not have spoken of it to you.’
‘He never tells me anything,’ Maria replied.‘But I can guess what he must have answered. He probably said that the Count of Montalto buys horses but does not sell them!’
Giuliana laughed.
‘I did not know you could be so malicious, Maria! That is precisely what he did say.’
‘I did not mean to say anything disagreeable, I’m sure,’ returned Maria. ‘That is Diego’s way; he is old-fashioned. The idea that a Count of the Holy Roman Empire could possibly sell anything never occurred to him.’
‘My father is just like him in that,’ observed Giuliana.
‘So was mine! It is the reason why he left me only just enough to live comfortably, instead of several millions. If I had not been his only child we should have starved!’
‘We were ten, and nine of us are alive.’ Giuliana laughed. ‘When my father and mother were sixty—you know they are just the same age—there were thirty-two at table, between us and our children!’
‘Look at the Saracinesca family,’ said Maria. ‘Old Prince Giovanni was an only son, I believe, and now they are like the sands by the sea! As far as numbers go, there is no fear of the old Roman families dying out!’
‘Your husband was an only son, was he not?’ Giuliana asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And you have only——’ The Marchesa checked herself—‘yes,’ she concluded with that extreme vagueness that comes over us all when we have half said something quite tactless.
But Maria chose to complete the thought.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, but not at all vaguely. ‘Do you wonder that I am anxious about letting my only child go about on foot when there are strikes?’
‘No, dear, I don’t wonder at all, though I do not think there is any real danger.’
‘I suppose presentiments are very foolish,’ Maria observed thoughtfully. ‘Do they ever trouble you, Giuliana?’
‘Not often. But I remember once being oppressed with the certainty that Sigismondo was going to die in the course of the winter. It haunted me day and night for weeks and weeks. I used to dream that he was lying dead on the dining-room table. It was always the dining-room table, and at last I got nervous about sitting down at it.’
‘Well? Did anything happen?’ Maria seemed interested.
‘Oh, yes! The children had the mumps.’ She spoke thoughtfully.
Very sensible people who are by no means stupid sometimes say things that would disgrace an idiot child. But Maria did not laugh.
‘The other night, after I had left you,’ she said,‘there was some sort of demonstration in the Piazza di Venezia, and the carriage stopped a moment before turning another way. A man looked through the window, trying to see me in the dark. I could see him plainly under the electric light. It was a horrible face, flattened against the pane, and though I did not pay much attention to it at the time, it comes back to me and frightens me when I know that Leone is out in the streets with his tutor. Perhaps he is only going to have the mumps!’
She tried to laugh now.
‘A tutor is generally supposed to be a sufficient protection for a boy,’ observed Giuliana, not much impressed. ‘Yours is a good-sized man too, and Sigismondo always says that keeping order in a city depends on the delusion that big men are more dangerous than short men. At all events most people think they are, and your tutor looks like an ex-carabineer.’
‘I’m sure he is a coward,’ said Maria nervously. ‘He would think only of saving himself if there were any danger! I’m sure of it.’
‘It’s all imagination, my dear,’ said the practical Marchesa. ‘Your love for the boy makes you fancy that all sorts of impossible things are going to happen to him.’
‘Giuliana—perhaps I’m very foolish to be made wretched by a presentiment, but if any harm came to Leone——’
She stopped short. The conventional phrase ‘I should die’ was on her lips, but before it was spoken she realised that it meant nothing to her, and checked herself.
‘Of course, of course!’ answered Giuliana in a motherly tone. ‘I quite understand that. I’m fond of my children, too; I know just what you feel.’
‘It’s not the same for you, Giuliana,’ said Maria in a low tone. ‘I’ve only Leone, you know.’
‘Leone and your husband,’ corrected Unassailable Virtue.
‘Yes, Leone and my husband.’
Maria did not resent the correction. Even Giuliana did not suspect that she was desperately unhappy in more ways than one, and it was better so; but she silently thought of what her life would be if Leone were taken and her husband were left.