“It’s that, all right. And it will be no end of fun having you out there!” She smiled sardonically, and Ora coloured and moved restlessly. She was vaguely aware of a new drama unfolding, and had no wish to analyse it.
Mowbray, to Ida’s satisfaction, not only deserted his friends after luncheon, but permitted them to go on to Rome without him and lingered in Genoa. He was a fair well set-up young Englishman, with a nonchalant manner and an inflammable heart. Ida had met him at a country house and amused herself “landing him,” but as she had left England immediately after, and hunting had claimed all his ardours, she neither had seen nor heard from him since. Although she meant to keep him at her elbow as long as he served her purpose, she knew him to be a shy youth under his natural buoyancy and quick intelligence, and did not disturb her placid mind with visions of “scenes.” On the whole she liked Englishmen better than any of the men she had met in Europe, for they had more pride and self-control where women were concerned; if things went deeper with them they were less likely to offend her cold purity with outbursts of passion: which, she confided to Ora, “made her sick.”
To her delight Valdobia took them one afternoon to call on an elderly relative who lived in one of the great palaces of the Via Garibaldi. They were escorted up to the top floor; the rooms on the other pianos were either closed or emitted the chill breath of the tomb. Their destination was a large lofty room, inadequately heated by a stove in one corner; their noble hostess was fortified against the cold by several shawls and a foot-warmer. She had invited three other aristocratic relics in to look at “the Americans,” and, although the principessa and her friends were more polite than they would have been to intruding bourgeoises of their own country, it was apparent that they could find little to say to two young women from a land of which they had a confused and wholly contemptuous apprehension. They knew that its chief title to fame was its original discovery by a Genoese, that the lower classes emigrated to it a good deal, and that many American women, who spent far too much money on their clothes, visited Europe and occasionally married above them. More than this they neither knew nor cared to know. So far as they were concerned new countries did not exist.
Conversation languished. Ida was suppressed, and divided between a desire to laugh and to scream. Ora, with a heroic effort, talked about the mistake the average American made in seeing so little of Genoa; but, having laid aside her furs out of politeness, she was shivering, and unable to drink the strong coffee which immediately succumbed to the temperature of the room.
She sent an appealing glance to Valdobia, who was smiling to himself. Lord John, who had been honoured by a chair beside his hostess, treated with the consideration due his ancient lineage, was delivering himself of spasmodic clauses, with one eye on Valdobia.
“Jimminy!” whispered Ida, who now felt quite at home with her fellow conspirator, “if you don’t get us out of this quick I’ll have high-strikes, and Ora’ll get a cold and be laid up for a week. I always keep her in bed when she has a cold.”
Valdobia rose instantly. “We have an engagement in half an hour,” he said to his mother’s second cousin. “Perhaps you will permit me to show these ladies over the palace?”
“Oh, do!” exclaimed Mowbray, acting on instinct, for he was too cold and too unnerved to think. “I’d like jolly well to see it myself; must be rippin’.”
The permission was given with some graciousness, and the party bowed themselves out. As they descended the grand staircase, they heard a buzz of voices behind them, as of several elderly ladies talking at once.
“We’d be roasting on red-hot coals this minute if there were any in that refrigerator,” said Ida, “but I don’t care so long as we are going to see the real part of the palace.”