As she was passing the Costanzi she saw the yellow-faced gentleman who strolled in the "Pussies' Garden." He was talking to a friend, plump as himself with round, dull blue eyes, a restless little red dog under his arm. Regina knew this personage also. He was an actor who played important parts at the Costanzi. Regina fancied the two men looked at her admiringly, and she coloured with satisfaction; then suddenly conceived something blameworthy in her pleasure, and felt angry with herself, as a few hours earlier she had been angry with Antonio for "talking like a child." She arrived at the Princess's in an aggressive humour, and came in with her head very high. She did not speak to the servant nor even look at him, remembering that he always received her husband and herself with a familiarity not exactly disrespectful, but somehow humiliating.
Madame Makuline's drawing-room, though its furs and its carpets had been removed, was still very hot. Branches of lilac in the great metal vases diffused an intense, pungent, almost poisonous fragrance. Only two ladies had called; one of them was abusing Rome to Marianna, and the girl, unusually ugly, in an absurd, low red dress, was protesting ferociously and threatening to bite the slanderer. The Princess listened, pale, cold, her heavy face immobile. Regina came in, and at once Marianna rushed to meet her, crying—
"If you are going to say horrid things, too, I shall go mad!"
Regina sat down, elegantly, winding her train round her feet as she had seen Miss Harris do; and, having learned the subject in dispute, said with a malicious smile—
"Most certainly Rome is odious."
"I'll have to scratch you!" cried Marianna; "and it will be a thousand pities, for you're quite lovely to-day! Now you're blushing and you look better still! Your hat's just like one I saw at Buda-Pesth on a grand duchess."
"Rome odious?" said the Princess, turning to Regina, who was still smiling sarcastically; "that's not what you said a few days ago."
"It's easy to change one's opinion."
"Beg pardon?"
"It's easy to change one's opinion," shouted Regina, irritated; "besides, I said the other day that Rome was delightful for the rich. It's altogether abominable for the poor. The poor man, at Rome, is like a beggar before the shut door of a palace, a beggar gnawing a bone——"