CHAPTER XXII
Cecilia told her mother what Lamberti had advised her to do for Guido's sake, and that she had sent her message by him. The Countess was surprised and did not quite like the plan.
"Either you love him, or you do not, my dear," she said. "You were sure that you did not, and you told him so. That was sensible, at least, though I think you might have found out earlier what you felt. It is much better to let him understand at once that you will not marry him. Men would always rather know the truth at once and get over it than be kept dangling at a capricious woman's beck and call."
Cecilia did not explain that Lamberti feared for his friend's life. In broad daylight that looked dramatic, and her mother would not believe it. She only said that she was sure she was acting for the best and that the engagement was to stand a little longer, adding that she wished to leave Rome, as it was very hot. In her heart she was hurt at being called capricious, but was too penitent to deny the charge.
The Countess at once wrote a formal note to Princess Anatolie in which she said that she had been hasty and spoken too soon, that her daughter seemed undecided, and that nothing was to be said at present about breaking the engagement. The marriage, she added, would be put off until the autumn.
The Princess showed this communication to Monsieur Leroy when he came in. He did not mean to tell her about his visit to the lawyer, for he had made up his mind to play on her credulity as much as he could and to attribute any advantage she might gain by his manœuvres to supernatural intervention. The Countess's letter surprised him very much, and as he did not know what to do, it seemed easy to do nothing. He expressed his disgust at Cecilia's vacillation.
"She is a flirt and her mother is a fool," he said, and the speech seemed to him pithy and concise.
The old Princess raised her aristocratic eyebrows a little. She would have expressed the same idea more delicately. There was a vulgar streak in his character that often jarred on her, but she said nothing, for she was inexplicably fond of him. For her own part, she was glad that Cecilia had apparently changed her mind again.
Later in the day she received a few words from Guido, written in an unsteady hand, to say that he was sorry he could not come and see her as he had a bad attack of influenza. At the word she dropped the note as if it burnt her fingers, and called Monsieur Leroy, for she believed that influenza could be communicated in almost any way, and it was the only disease she really feared: she had a presentiment that she was to die of it.