She smiled, and looked down at her hand, and then glanced at him quickly, and almost happily. If she had studied men for ten years she could not have found word or look more certain to touch him and win him to her way.
"Thank you," he said, rather curtly, for he was thinking of another answer. "If I take you to Guido, what shall you say to him?"
She drew herself up against the back of the sofa, but the smile still lingered on her lips.
"You must trust me, too," she answered. "Do you think I can compose set speeches beforehand? When shall we go? How is it to be managed?"
"You often go out with your maid, do you not? What sort of woman is she? A dragon?"
"No!" Cecilia laughed. "She is very respectable and nice, and thinks I am perfection. But then, she is terribly near-sighted, and cannot wear spectacles because they fall off her nose."
"Then she loses her way easily, I suppose?" said Lamberti, too much intent on his plans to be amused at trifles.
"Yes. She is always losing her way."
"That might easily happen to her in the Palazzo Farnese. It is a huge place, and you could manage to go up one way while she went up the other. Besides, there is a lift at the back, not to mention the servants' staircases, in which she might be hopelessly lost. Can you trust her not to lose her head and make the porters search the palace for you, if you are separated from her?"
"I am not sure. But she will stay wherever I tell her to wait for me. That might be better. You see, my only excuse for going to the Palazzo Farnese would be to see the ambassador's daughter, and she is in the country."