‘Shall we go and see Leone now?’ Montalto suggested. ‘On the way you can show me what you have done to the house. You have not ruined me in furniture,’ he added with a smile, as he looked round the rather empty drawing-room.
‘I left as much as possible to you,’ Maria answered.
She was thinking of Leone, and she already saw before her the sturdy little blue-eyed boy with his thick and short brown hair. They went on through the house to the door of Maria’s boudoir, at the end of the great ball-room.
‘That is where I have installed myself,’ she said, pointing to it and turning to the left, towards the masked door that led to the living rooms in the other wing.
‘Yes, I remember,’ answered Montalto. ‘And this is your dressing-room, I suppose,’ he added as they walked on. ‘And this used to be your bedroom.’
‘Yes,’ said Maria steadily. ‘That is the door of my bedroom.’
Leone’s was the next, and in a moment they were standing in a flood of afternoon light, and Maria bent down and kissed the small boy’s hair because he would not turn up his cheek to her, being very intent on examining Montalto’s face. But Maria dared not look at her husband just then.
‘Here we are at last, dear,’ she said as well as she could, still bending over him.
To some extent she could trust the child’s manners, for she had brought him up herself, but her heart beat fast during the little silence before Montalto spoke, and she wondered what his tone would be much more than what he was going to say, for she felt sure that the words would not be unkind.
Montalto held out his hand, and Leone took it slowly. He had never been kissed by a man, and did not imagine that his newly-introduced papa could be expected to kiss him. This was fortunate, for Montalto had not the least intention of doing so.