‘Ah—he was an artist because he was young, not because he was called, and I suppose he got tired of the play. The real artist for you—it is that poor young man painting moonlight in Venice.’ The lady tapped Marcia’s arm gently with her fan. ‘But you and I know, Miss Copley, that Paul Dessart never went back to America just from homesickness; when a young man hasn’t reached thirty yet, you may be pretty sure of finding a woman behind most of his motives.’
Marcia had the uncomfortable feeling that the lady’s eyes were fixed upon her with a speculative light in their depths. She endeavoured to look disinterested as she again cast about for a more propitious topic. Glancing up, she saw that her uncle, accompanied by Laurence Sybert and Mr. and Mrs. Melville, was crossing the room in their direction. Sybert, who was laughing and chatting easily with Mrs. Melville, apparently did not feel that there was any awkwardness in the moment. He delivered a cordially indifferent bow which was evidently meant to be divided between Marcia and her companion. After a moment or so of general greetings, Marcia found herself talking with Mrs. Melville, while her uncle and the consul-general still discussed riots, and the lady who wrote appropriated Sybert.
‘We are sorry to hear you are leaving the villa so early, though I suppose we shall all be following in a week or so,’ said Mrs. Melville. ‘One clings pretty closely to the shady side of the street even now. Aren’t these riots dreadful?’ she rambled on. ‘Poor Laurence Sybert is working himself thin over them. It is the only subject one hears nowadays.’
Marcia achieved an intelligent reply, while at the same time she found herself listening to the conversation on the other side. To her intense discomfort, it was still of Paul Dessart.
‘Yes, I heard that he had been suddenly called home; that was hard luck,’ said Sybert quietly.
‘Between you and me, Paul Dessart never gave up art and went back to Pittsburg because he was tired of Rome. As I told Miss Copley, when a young man decides to settle down and be serious, you may mark my words there’s a woman in the case. Oh, I knew it all the time.’ She lowered her tone. ‘We’ll be reading of an engagement in the Paris Herald one of these days.’
‘I dare say, as usual, you’re right,’ Sybert said dryly; while Marcia, inwardly raging and outwardly smiling, gave ear to Mrs. Melville again.
‘Oh, did I tell you,’ Mrs. Melville asked, ‘that we are coming out to the villa next Saturday for “week-end”? It’s a long-standing invitation, that we’ve never found a chance to accept. But it’s so charming out there that we can’t bear to miss it, and so we are throwing over all our other engagements in order to get out this week before you break up.’
Marcia murmured some polite phrases while she tried to catch the gist of the conversation on the other side. It was not of Paul Dessart, she reassured herself. The woman who wrote was narrating an adventure with some ‘bread-tickets’ of the anti-begging society, and the two men—Melville and Sybert—were chaffing her uncle. The point of the story appeared to be against him. He finally broke away, and with a glance at his watch turned back to his niece.
‘Well, Marcia, if we are to catch that six-o’clock train, I think it is time that we were off.’