Now was my time. "I shan't be able to rest quite yet," said I, with a careless air. "I shall see you in, say 'How-de-do' to the Contessa, and then I must be off to the hotel where I used to stop. I remember it as delightful."
"Why," exclaimed the Boy blankly, "but I thought—I thought we were going to stay with the Contessa!"
"You are, but I'm not," I explained calmly. "My friends the Winstons may very likely turn up at the same hotel" (this was true on the principle that anything, no matter how unexpected, may happen); "and if they should, I'd want to be on the spot to give them a welcome. I wouldn't miss them for the world."
"The Contessa will be disappointed," said the Boy slowly.
"Oh no, I don't think so; and if she is, a little, you will easily console her."
"If I had dreamed that you wouldn't––" The Boy began his sentence hastily, then cut it as quickly short.
I opened the gate. We passed in together, Joseph remaining outside according to my directions, keeping Fanny-anny as well as Finois, while Innocentina followed the Boy with the pack-donkey.
A turn in the path brought us suddenly upon a lawn, surrounded with shrubbery which at first had hidden it from our view. There, under a huge crimson umbrella, rising flowerlike by its long slender stem from the smooth-shaven grass, sat four persons in basket chairs, round a small tea table. Gaetà, in green as pale as Undine's draperies, sprang up with a glad little cry to greet us. The Baron and Baronessa smiled bleak "society smiles," and a handsome, fair young man frankly glared.
Evidently this was the great Paolo, master of the air and ships that sail therein; and as evidently he had heard of us.
Now I knew what the Baron had meant when he said to his wife: "Something shall happen, my dear." He had telegraphed a danger-signal to Paolo, and Paolo had lost not a moment in responding. This looked as if Paolo meant business in deadly earnest, where the Contessa was concerned; for how many dinners and medals must he not have missed in Paris, how many important persons in the air-world must he not have offended, by breaking his engagements in the hope of making one here?