"Madame," said Marston, "I should appreciate the description better if it spoke less of a longing to return."
"It is my kingdom, you see," she replied. "Barbarous no doubt, with a turbulent populace, but still it is my kingdom, and very loyal to me."
Culverton paid her the obvious flattery, but she took no heed of it.
"The tiniest, compactest kingdom," she went on in a musing tone, "sequestered in a nook of the world." She seated herself on a chair which stood at the edge of the Piazza. "Indeed, I shall return there, and that, I fancy, soon."
"Countess!" replied Culverton. "That were too heartless. 'Twould decimate London, let me perish! For never a gallant but would drink himself to death. Oh, fie!"
Marston joined eagerly in the other's protestations. For my part, however, I remained silent, well content with what she had said. For I recollected the evening when I first had talk with her, and the construction which I had placed upon her words; how she would never return to Lukstein until she was eased of the pain which her husband's disaster had caused her. The notion that her memories had lost their sting thrilled me to the heart, and woke my vanity to conjecture of a cause.
"Then," said the Countess, "would my friends be proved heartless. For it is their turn to visit me, and I would not be baulked of requiting them for their kindness to me here. 'Tis not so tedious a journey after all."
"I can warrant the truth of that," said Culverton. "For I have been as far as Innspruck myself."
"Indeed?" said the Countess. She looked hard at him for a second, and then laughed to herself. "When was that?" she asked.
"Some six years ago. I was on the grand tour with a tutor--a most obnoxious person, who was ever poring over statues and cold marble figures, but as for a fine woman, rabbit me if he ever knew one when he saw her. He dragged me with him from Italy to Innspruck to view some figures in the Cathedral."