“Wednesday I should be glad.”
“Good! On Wednesday, then, we shall tarnish your fame for veracity, and, if I mistake not, brighten it for modesty.”
The final tones of the sunset’s colours had given way to deepest shadow. At Hera’s side, listening to her account of the river episode, stood Don Riccardo’s companion of the motor car—a dark, bearded man of middle height, whose face was hard and cruel, and seemed the more so in the grim flare of the machine’s lamps.
“Signor Tarsis!” Don Riccardo called to him. “Let me present you. The Honourable Forza. Probably you have met.”
Tarsis, drawing nearer, gave Mario no more than a half nod of recognition, while he said, in a manner of one merely observing the civilities:
“I have to thank you for the service I hear you have rendered my affianced wife.”
There was a pause before Mario replied that he counted it a great privilege to be at hand in the moment of Donna Hera’s need. The last word was still on his lips when Tarsis turned to Don Riccardo and asked if he were ready to go back to the villa, and the older man answered with a bare affirmative. Presently the car was brought about; as it shot away Hera and Mario followed. Now and again the highway bore close to the river’s margin, and the splash of the rampant water sounded in the dark. A little while and they stopped at the Barbiondi gates, where their ways parted—hers up the winding road to the house, his onward to the nearest bridge, that he might cross and ride back to Viadetta.
“I regret that I cannot be with you to-night,” he told her. “An hour and I must start for Rome.”
“Until Wednesday, then?” she said, giving him her hand.
“Until Wednesday.”