‘It is only what I owe to my wife,’ Montalto answered, and he bent over her hand with as much ceremony as if there had been twenty people in the room.
‘I have something to tell you, too,’ she said. ‘You ought to know it. Baldassare del Castiglione has come back to Rome. We have met alone, and we have agreed never to see each other again—except as we may chance to find ourselves in a friend’s house at the same time.’
Montalto could not help dropping her hand as soon as she pronounced Castiglione’s name, but his face changed little.
‘I daresay you were wise to see him once,’ he replied, a trifle coldly. ‘We need not refer to him again.’
She could not have expected more than that, but when he had answered she was a little sorry that she had spoken at all. He would willingly have trusted her without that explanation.
With an evident wish to change the subject, he began to ask questions about the apartment, inquiring how she liked it, and whether she had found Schmidt efficient in carrying out her wishes.
‘Very,’ she answered to the last question. ‘He is a wonderful man.’
‘Yes,’ Montalto assented coldly, ‘in some ways he is an extraordinary young man.’
There was something more reserved in the tone than in the words, but Maria was very far from being intimate enough with her husband yet to ask whether Schmidt had any fault or weakness that justified his master’s evident doubts about him. She wondered what the trouble might be.