She rose and stood facing him, cold but angry.
"You are forgetting yourself, Count di Marioni, and your speech is a presumption. We have been friends, but, if you wish our friendship to continue, you will alter your tone. You have no right to speak to me in that tone, and I expect an apology."
His lips quivered, and he spoke with a strange bitterness.
"No right! Ay, you say well 'no right,' Adrienne. Will you spare me a few moments alone? I have a thing to say to you."
She frowned and hesitated for a moment. After all, she had a woman's heart, and she could not choose but pity him.
"Will not another time do, Leonardo?" she asked almost gently. "You see I have a visitor."
Yes, he saw it. He had looked up into the handsome, debonair face, with that proud, happy smile upon the parted lips, from the garden path below. How he hated it.
"I may be summoned away from Palermo at any moment," he said. "Cannot you spare me a short five minutes? I will go away then."
She looked down at her lover. He rose to his feet promptly.
"I'll have a cigar among the magnolias," he exclaimed. "Call me when I may come up."