‘It means damned impudence!’ said her uncle. ‘I’ll have that editor arrested if he doesn’t keep still,’ and the two men stood eyeing each other a minute in silence. Then Copley gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I don’t believe the Grido del Popolo can destroy my character. Nobody reads it.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’d better go and dress, Marcia. My party begins promptly at eight.’
‘You needn’t use any such clumsy method as that of getting rid of me,’ she laughed. ‘I’m not going to stay where I’m not wanted. All I have to say,’ she called back from the doorway, ‘is that you’d better stop badgering those poor old beggars, or you’ll be getting a warning to leave Rome as well as Naples.’
Marcia rang for Granton.
‘Have you time to fix my hair now?’ she inquired as the maid appeared, ‘or does Mrs. Copley need you?’
‘Mrs. Copley hasn’t begun to dress yet; she is watching Master Gerald eat his supper.’
‘Oh, very well, then, there is time enough; I’ll get through before she is ready for you. Do my hair sort of Frenchy,’ she commanded as she sat down before the mirror. ‘What dress do you think I’d better wear?’ she continued presently. ‘That white one I wore last week, or the new green one that came from Paris yesterday?’
‘I should think the white one, Miss Marcia, and save the new one for some party.’
‘It would be more sensible,’ Marcia agreed; ‘but,’ she added with a laugh, ‘I think I’ll wear the new one.’
Granton got it out with an unsmiling face which was meant to convey the fact that she could not countenance this American prodigality. She had lived ten years with an elderly English duchess, and had thought that she knew the ways of the aristocracy.