“I will do as you wish,” Hera assured him, willingly.
“I thank you, sincerely. Will you return with me to the villa, that we may make some arrangement while there is yet time?”
“Yes; let us go.”
She bade Mario adieu and started for the door with Tarsis. They had gone only a few paces when they heard the voice of Mario. “A word, Donna Hera, if you will be good enough to wait,” he said.
Tarsis wheeled quickly, with flashing eye, and the others saw that once more he was his aggressive self; but this time, as before, he checked the impulse to pour forth his anger on Mario, remembering that he had more important work to do. He bowed his head and drooped his shoulders, as became a crushed spirit, and waited, ears alert.
“Hera,” Mario said, when they stood a little apart from Tarsis, “I wish to tell you that I am summoned to Rome to-night. I meant to leave Viadetta on the train that meets the Roman express at Milan. If you need me I will not go. If you have the slightest misgiving, the faintest sense that you want me at your side, I will go with you now to Villa Barbiondi.”
The fists of Tarsis doubled and relaxed and his eyes were sidelong as he watched her face and listened. The smile of the cheat who takes a trick came to his lips when he caught her answer.
“It will be kinder if you are absent,” she said—“kinder to him. It is all that we can do,” and she added, trustfully, “I have no misgiving.”
With a soft word of farewell, she turned from him and walked with Tarsis to the cloister, where their horses stood. From his place in the chapel Mario saw Tarsis help her to mount and follow her through the broken portico. Then the masonry hid them from his view, and the next minute the noise of an automobile told him they were on the road.
“God Almighty bless and keep you, Hera!” he murmured. In the chapel he lingered, looking upon the flaming west and darkening hillside, until his lonely horse called to him with impatient neighs.