‘Yes,’ Maria replied, after a moment’s thought. ‘Yes, he is like his mother, I think. She was a very grand old lady with dark eyes and iron-grey hair.’
‘Am I like papa?’ inquired Leone.
‘No, dear. You are not like him.’ Maria rose from the table rather quickly.
‘Why not, mama?’
‘I cannot tell,’ answered Maria from the window, and not looking round.
‘Because most of the boys are, you know,’ continued Leone. ‘There’s Mondo Parenzo, and Mario Campodonico, and——’
She could have screamed.
Happily Leone remembered no more striking family likenesses just then, and presently she heard him get down from his chair and go off, as he had a way of doing when no one paid attention to what he said. It was also time for the morning inspection of his weapons, and he had lately noticed a slight tendency to rust about the breech of his newest tin gun, which worked just like a real one, and made nearly as much noise.
When Maria was alone she recovered herself almost instantly, and when her maid came to her she was quite calm. She began to give orders about mourning, for in Rome that matter is regulated by custom with the most absolute precision, to the very day, and not to conform to the rules is regarded as little less than an insult offered to the family of the relative who has died. Montalto had a good many more or less distant relations in Rome, but it was not only out of consideration for them that Maria went into mourning on that very day and dressed Leone in black and white; if there was one being in the world whose sorrow she was bound to respect outwardly as well as in every other way, that man was her husband.
The death of the Dowager Countess of Montalto was in itself a matter of indifference to her; she was much more affected by the announcement that a letter from Montalto himself would soon be on its way to her, and by the fact that she would have to answer it. Years had elapsed since the two had written to each other, and the moment of her final reconciliation with Castiglione and with her conscience was not the one she would have chosen for renewing her correspondence with the husband she had injured.