This fascinating young Florentine was in personal appearance and temperament so diametrically antagonistic to the charming baroness that they were inevitably destined to be attracted to each other, as positive and negative in electricity.
Therefore it followed that at their very first meeting the dark, graceful, fiery Italian youth became desperately enamored of the fair, stately, serene German lady.
After the ball, the baroness and her protégée were inundated with invitations to all sorts of entertainments, so that had they accepted every one, between garden parties, morning concerts, five o’clock teas, dinner parties and balls, they would have had scarcely an hour to call their own.
Lilith, with her saddened heart, sank from all these social excitements and dissipations, yet, being irresistibly borne on by the imperious will of the baroness, she was drawn into the maelstrom.
Gherardini, with Italian subtlety, contrived to meet the baroness everywhere, so that gossip soon connected their names, and the world looked forward to the announcement of their betrothal.
The baroness laughed at him, as a boy, behind his back, but treated him as a prince before his face.
Lilith secretly hoped that they might marry, and be happy, so that she herself might be at liberty to return to New York and rest in Aunt Sophie’s quiet though humble home.
So the London season drew to its close. The announcement of the marriage of Prince Otto Gherardini with the Baroness Von Bruyin, arranged to come off early in the ensuing year, appeared in the Court Journal, and in the society columns of other London papers. It took no one by surprise, not even Lilith.
Madame Von Bruyin and her suite left London for a short tour in Wales and Cornwall, and spent a few pleasant and healthful weeks in leisurely travel through that beautiful, picturesque and legendary land.
In September they halted, and took lodgings at a farm-house near the mountain village of Llandorf.