A Lady of Rome

by F. Marion Crawford

When she was alone she did not bury her face in the corner of the tattered little sofa, nor did any tears rise in her tired eyes; she only sat there quite still, and her head fell forward as if she had fainted; but her fingers slowly tore little shreds from the faded pink silk of the sofa.

Schmidt stayed away a long time. She heard his footsteps at last on a tiled floor in the distance, and raised her hand quickly to cover her eyes, while her lips moved for a moment. When the steward unlocked the second door and came in, she was standing quietly by the window waiting for him.

The worst was over for that day, and though she was still very pale, she was no longer deadly white, and the haunted look that had come back suddenly to her eyes was gone. She went through the house systematically after that, conscientiously fulfilling her husband’s requests; she gave clear directions about her own rooms and the one she meant to give Leone, and made many suggestions about the rest. She showed Schmidt the little apartment once occupied by her mother-in-law, and advised the steward to have it carefully cleaned and set in order, since nothing was to be changed in it. At present, she said, it looked neglected, and the Count would certainly not like to find it so. Schmidt nodded gravely, as if he quite understood. She was so quiet and calm now, that he thought he had been mistaken in thinking her disturbed by some poignant memory. She had probably felt ill.

When she left the palace at last, she told him to let her know when the refurnishing was so far advanced as to make a visit from her necessary, and she thanked him so kindly for his attention that he blushed a little.

For Orlando Schmidt was a modest and well-educated young man, of a respectable Austrian family by his father’s side, but an Italian as to his nationality. He had been to good schools, he had studied scientific farming at an agricultural institute in Upper Austria, and he had followed a commercial course in Milan; he had also learned something about practical building, and was naturally possessed of tolerably good taste.

‘I hope you will stay here and take charge of the Roman estate,’ said the Countess. ‘I fancy the lands are in as bad a condition as the apartment upstairs.’

She smiled graciously, and Schmidt blushed again.

‘Your Excellency is very kind,’ he said modestly, as he stood beside her low phaeton with his hat in his hand. ‘I am lodged here in the palace, if you need me.’

She drove away, and before the carriage turned the corner of the palace on the way to the more central part of the city, she had quite forgotten Orlando Schmidt, though he had made such a favourable impression upon her.

But the young man stood before the great arched entrance and watched her till she was out of sight, with an expression she could not have understood; and afterwards he whistled softly as he turned back to ascend the stairs again in order to make careful notes of all she had said about each room. He began in the boudoir, and he sat down on the little sofa near the fireplace, with his large note-book on his knee, and wrote busily while her words were still fresh in his memory. Once or twice he looked towards the door, which he could see as he sat, and the broken pieces of mirror caught his eye. He remembered that his Italian mother had once told him when he was a boy that it was very unlucky to break a mirror. But he smiled at the recollection, for he was not a superstitious young man, and had received a half-scientific education.