She stepped from the marble stairway into the hall of the hotel, remembering all at once that she did not have Amaldi's address. But then "Marchese Amaldi, Lago Maggiore" ought to be enough. Still, yes, it would be better to ask at the office of the hotel. They would doubtless be able to give it to her.
The head-clerk smiled affably as she asked, and made a sweeping gesture with his left arm.
"But, Madame, there is the Marchese himself," said he.
Sophy turned quickly.
Amaldi, who had just entered, was lighting a cigarette, his back turned towards her. Then he turned suddenly just as she had done, and saw her. The next moment she had given him her hand and was explaining how she happened to be in Milan in the dead of summer. Her explanations were a vague murmur to Amaldi. He was thinking that nothing less than Fate had ordered it. It was "meant" that she should come to Italy and that he should be holding her hand in his—after so many bitter dreams. Fate had brought her back into his life—the one woman he had ever desired with his whole being.
He had only a few moments with her, however, before the friend for whom he had called came downstairs. His mother was waiting outside in her carriage. Might she call on Mrs. Chesney next day? Sophy said that she had just been thinking what a pleasure it would be to meet the Marchesa. She smiled at him as she said this and gave him her hand again. Amaldi, who was rather pale, bent and kissed it. Then he joined his mother's guest and they went out together.
Sophy wished that he could have driven with her that evening. He was even nicer than she remembered him.
"I wonder if he is like his mother?" she thought as she got into the little carozza for her lonely outing. "I'm sure to like her if she is anything like him." And all during the drive she kept wishing that Amaldi could have come with her.
Next afternoon the Marchesa called. She was a tall, finely made woman of the Juno type, with beautiful, light brown, sparkling eyes under jet black eyebrows, and a fluff of silken, fox-grey hair that must have been gold-red when she was young. But then, as it was, youth unquenchable laughed from those shrewd, brilliant eyes, though she was sixty. Her little bonnet of white camellias with its big, black bow, that so became her, was all Paris in a hat-frame. She evidently had a "sweet-tooth" for confections in dress, just as some people have for actual bonbons.
She had not talked in her natural, easy, laughing way for ten minutes before Sophy thought her the most delightful woman she had ever known. She asked almost at once to see Bobby—won his heart immediately. Told Sophy that she needn't worry in the least about doctors on the Lake—that there was an excellent one, an old friend of hers, at Stresa—Cesare Camenis.