‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Teresa has been talking about you again, dear,’ said Giuliana.
‘Has she invented a new story?’
‘Yes. She is telling every one that you have been seeing a great deal of Balduccio.’
Maria bent her smooth brows a little, and asked to be told more precisely what Teresa had said. Giuliana repeated to her what Parenzo had told her, and Maria listened in silence. The Marchesa concluded by saying that whether it were true or not that Castiglione was coming back to Rome, Maria ought to know what the Colonel had said about it. Maria nodded thoughtfully and still looked down.
‘That much is true,’ she said at last. ‘He is coming back, if he can exchange. But the rest, about our meeting in quiet streets—that is pure invention.’
Giuliana looked grave. She had known something of the truth during all these years, and she had understood her friend, as she thought, and had silently sympathised with her steady effort to atone for her fault. Very good women generally draw a sharp dividing line in such cases. Giuliana had always been sorry for Maria and had helped her in many ways, without asking any confidences, to recover her self-respect and the relative esteem of the people amongst whom she lived. But the idea that Maria should ever again, under any imaginable circumstances, meet and talk with Castiglione, even in the most innocent way, was revolting to Giuliana, and it was long since she had received such a shock as disturbed her equanimity when Maria admitted the truth of what the Duca di Casalmaggiore had told Parenzo. Her face changed instantly, she leaned back again in her chair, folded her arms, and looked at the mantelpiece. Altogether she assumed an attitude of resistance, and Maria understood that she was displeased.
‘You think I am wrong to let him come back, don’t you?’ Maria asked, rather timidly.
‘Yes,’ Giuliana answered without the least hesitation, ‘I do.’
‘I will try and tell you what I feel and what I hope,’ Maria said. ‘You will understand me then, I’m sure. You will think I may be right.’