"Have you sailed much?" inquired Diana.
"A good deal. I bought Leonora a very good boat in Naples, and had it fitted. It is so pretty. And before it came Monsieur Batiscombe took us to Castellamare."
"Ah!" ejaculated Diana half interrogatively.
"Yes," answered Marcantonio. "He was very amiable, and then we had him to dinner. You know him, Diana?" he asked, as one often asks questions of which one knows the answer.
He did not remember having ever mentioned Batiscombe to her, but his solitary journey to Rome a week earlier had set him thinking, in a lazy fashion, and he wondered whether his sister ever thought of the man after all these years.
"Oh yes," answered Madame de Charleroi. "I have known Batiscombe a long time,—long before he was famous."
"Yes," said her brother, "I remember to have heard that he was once so bold as to want you to marry him. Imagine to yourself a little! The wife of an author."
There was nothing ill-natured in what Marcantonio said. In the prejudice of his ancient name he was simply unable to imagine such a match. Diana turned her grey eyes full upon him.
"My dear boy, do not say such absurd things. We are not in the age of Colonna and Orsini any more. I came very near to marrying Julius Batiscombe, in spite of your fifty titles, my dear brother."
Diana was a loyal woman, from the outer surface that the world saw, down to the very core and holy of holies of her noble soul. She would not let her brother believe that, if she had chosen it, she would have feared to marry a poor literary hack.