She studied him in silence.
“Yes”—at length—“there is a change. Something seems absent from your face. A nervousness. As if....”
“As if,” he supplied, “the phantoms of De Medici had said good-bye.”
“As if you loved me in a simpler way,” she corrected. “But I’ll tell you what’s left now. If you wish to hear.”
“Some tea?” he asked.
He gave instructions to his man. Ten minutes later they were sitting happily over their emptied cups.
“Well,” Florence began, “it goes back to long ago. I remember none of it. But the story is familiar. Poor father—I still must call him father—told it to me at least a dozen times. It was in London before I was born. There was a man named Bandoux, a Frenchman. He and Victor Ballau were rivals for my mother’s love. Does it sound stilted?”
She smiled sadly.
“A rather old-fashioned melodrama,” she continued. “Bandoux was a dashing, unscrupulous sort. And she eloped with him. They were gone about a year and they came back to London with me. Bandoux had refused to marry her, even after I came. In fact, he mistreated, abused and reviled her every hour of the day. And poor Victor still loved her. Mother was young and temperamental and proud, of course. But finally Victor’s love reached her heart. They were married and lived together happily for a year.”
“Old Fanny was a little mixed in her dates,” De Medici smiled as she paused, “but otherwise the story is the same—to that point.”