“Why then do you make me speak?”
Rowland meditated a moment. “Is it also necessary that you should lose the best friend you have?”
Roderick looked up. “That ‘s for you to settle!”
His best friend clapped on his hat and strode away; in a moment the door closed behind him. Rowland walked hard for nearly a couple of hours. He passed up the Corso, out of the Porta del Popolo and into the Villa Borghese, of which he made a complete circuit. The keenness of his irritation subsided, but it left him with an intolerable weight upon his heart. When dusk had fallen, he found himself near the lodging of his friend Madame Grandoni. He frequently paid her a visit during the hour which preceded dinner, and he now ascended her unillumined staircase and rang at her relaxed bell-rope with an especial desire for diversion. He was told that, for the moment, she was occupied, but that if he would come in and wait, she would presently be with him. He had not sat musing in the firelight for ten minutes when he heard the jingle of the door-bell and then a rustling and murmuring in the hall. The door of the little saloon opened, but before the visitor appeared he had recognized her voice. Christina Light swept forward, preceded by her poodle, and almost filling the narrow parlor with the train of her dress. She was colored here and there by the flicking firelight.
“They told me you were here,” she said simply, as she took a seat.
“And yet you came in? It is very brave,” said Rowland.
“You are the brave one, when one thinks of it! Where is the padrona?”
“Occupied for the moment. But she is coming.”
“How soon?”
“I have already waited ten minutes; I expect her from moment to moment.”