'Well?'
'For the moment, I only know the Minister. I see him playing at the Club every night.'
'Tell me, Ugenta, has she been received at court yet?'
'I really do not know, Princess,' Andrea returned with some impatience.
The whole business had become simply intolerable to him. Elena's gaiety jarred horribly on him, and her husband's presence was more odious than ever. But if he was out of temper, it was more with himself than with the rest of the company. At the root of his irritation lay a dim longing after the pleasure he had so lately rejected. Hurt and offended by Elena's indifference, his heart turned with poignant regret to the other woman, and he pictured her wandering pensive and alone through the silent avenues, more beautiful, more noble than ever before.
The Princess rose and led the way into an adjoining room. Barbarella ran to the piano, which was entirely enveloped in an immense antique caparison of red velvet embroidered with dull gold, and began to sing Bizet's Tarantelle dedicated to Christine Nilsson. Elena and Eva leaned over her to read the music, while Ludovico stood behind them smoking a cigarette. The Prince had disappeared.
But Lord Heathfield kept firm hold of Andrea. He had drawn him into a window and was discoursing to him on certain little Urbanese 'coppette amatorie' which he had picked up at the Cavaliere Davila's sale, and the rasping voice with its aggravating interrogative inflections, the gestures with which he indicated the dimensions of the cups, and his glance—now dull and fishy, now keen as steel under the great prominent brow—in short, the whole man was so unendurably obnoxious to Andrea that he clenched his teeth convulsively like a patient under the surgeon's knife.
His one absorbing thought was how to get away. His plan was to rush to the Pincio in the hope of finding Donna Maria and taking her, after all, to the Villa Medici. It was about two o'clock. He looked out of the window at the glorious sunshine; he turned back into the room, and saw the group of pretty women at the piano, bathed in the red glow struck out of the velvet cover by a strong golden ray. With this red glow the smoke of the cigarette mingled lightly as the talking and laughter mingled with the chords Barbarella Viti struck haphazard on the keys. Ludovico whispered a word or two in his cousin's ear, which the Princess forthwith communicated to her friends, for there was a renewed burst of laughter, ringing and deep, like a string of pearls dropping into a silver bowl. Then Barbarella took up Bizet's air again in a low voice—
'Tra, la la—Le papillon s'est envolé—Tra, la la——'
Andrea was anxiously on the watch for a favourable moment at which to interrupt Lord Heathfield's harangue and make his escape. But the collector had entered upon a series of rounded periods, each intimately connected with the other, without one break, without one pause for breath. A single stop would have saved the persecuted listener, but it never came, and the victim's torments grew more unbearable every minute.