‘That I even consent to ask myself shows that I trust you more than I did when you surprised me here not half an hour ago. And now please leave me, for I want to be alone. Perhaps I shall send for you to-morrow, or perhaps not for a week. If we chance to meet anywhere, come and speak to me, for people will think it strange if we avoid each other. But I shall ask you to come here for the answer to your question.’
‘Thank you,’ he answered gratefully.
Their hands touched each other for a moment, but neither spoke again, and he went quietly out.
CHAPTER III
Maria did not send for Castiglione the next day, nor during a number of days afterwards, and Giuliana Parenzo saw that she was very much preoccupied and was not looking well. The elder woman was far too good a friend to ask questions, and when the two were together she did her best to amuse Maria by her talk. The Marchesa was not particularly witty, but she sometimes told a story with little touches of humour that were quite her own. Very good women are rarely witty, but they often have a happy faculty of seeing the funny side of things. Wit wounds, but humour disarms.
Giuliana saw, too, that Maria did not like to be alone, even with Leone. The truth was that she slept little and was very nervous. Something had come back from the past to haunt her; often a nameless horror came near her, not at night only, for it was not the fear of an overwrought imagination, but in broad daylight too, when she was alone and chanced to be doing nothing. It was the more dreadful because she could not define it; she could not say that it was caused by the question Castiglione had asked her, and which she had promised to answer, but when she thought of that her mind refused to be reasonable, and the horror came upon her, and she felt that utter ruin was close at hand, lying in wait for her. She remembered the sensation well in the old days; she had sometimes fancied then that she was going mad, and had made great efforts to control herself, but she had never thought of asking a doctor what it was, for she had believed, and believed now, that it was a state of mind rather than the mere effect of anxiety and mental fatigue on her body. So she suffered much, and quite uselessly; but that was a small matter compared with the fact that she had promised Castiglione an answer before his fortnight’s leave was over, and that after several days she was no nearer to finding one than when he had left her.
Again and again she thought of telling Giuliana all her trouble and asking her advice, but she was always deterred by an inward conviction that her friend would not understand. She was mistaken in this, but she could not believe that she was. Giuliana knew something, of course; all Rome believed Teresa Crescenzi’s story, of which the starting-point was that she had loved Baldassare del Castiglione innocently, and it was Giuliana who had repeated the tale to her. Maria had shaken her head, and had answered that there was not much truth in it, but that people might as well believe it as invent any other story, since she would never tell any one, not even Giuliana, exactly what had happened.
‘It does not concern me only,’ she had said gravely.