Hoping my heart deceives me not, with fear and trembling I sign my unworthy name.
D. L.—London.”
Roma is the ward of Count Bonelli, the young King’s Prime Minister; she is a beautiful, high-spirited, noble-hearted woman, who has little or no memory of either father or mother. She lives a life of extravagant luxury—happy, thoughtless and frivolous, but always kind and generous. Still, her soul is asleep; she has never realised that Life is a serious matter, not to be trifled with or neglected. But when she meets David Rossi all is changed. She has called at his rooms with the idea of laying him in the dust. Ignorantly, and in the heat of the moment, he has publicly defamed her character, and she is intent on revenge.
“If I were a man, I suppose I should challenge you. Being a woman I can only come to you and tell you that you are wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Cruelly, terribly, shamefully wrong.”
“You mean to tell me…”
He was stammering in a husky voice, but she said quite calmly:
“I mean to tell you that in substance and in fact what you implied was false.”
There was a dry glitter of hatred and repulsion in her eyes which she tried to subdue, for she knew that he was looking at her still.