"Getting used to it? That's another matter." Regina felt a flood of contemptuous words rise to her lips, but she kept silence, thinking she would not deign even to reply. She walked to the window and saw the little black-dressed woman with the seven lemons, in the corner by the shut door; but she no longer felt the melancholy this sight had waked in her on her first coming to Rome. She had got used to it.
"The Princess often asks for you," said Arduina, "won't you come to her next reception? Now you've found a house and are getting settled, you can begin to return visits and make acquaintances."
"What good are acquaintances to me?"
"What good are they to others? Don't be posing as an oddity," said Antonio, a little sharply.
"Shall I have enough drawing-room to receive them in?" returned Regina in that cold voice of hers which froze her husband's heart.
He was dismayed and silent. Arduina, however, did not understand.
"Your drawing-room will be small," she said, "that means you can't have a large circle. But you'd better come to the Princess's. It's in your husband's interest."
"No. I don't know what to make of your princesses," said Regina; but immediately she repented, remembering her vows of a few minutes before. She laughed, joked, turned everything upside down in the little drawing-room, and promised to go with Arduina to see the Senator uncle.
"I'll tell him I'm a poetess, and ask him to get me an audience of the Queen," she said gaily.