‘No? Why, I met one the other day that I thought quite charming. His family is seven hundred years old, and he owns two castles and three villages.’
‘He wouldn’t stay charming. You’d find the castles damp, and the villages dirty, and the prince stupid.’ He dropped his hand over hers where it rested on the balustrade. ‘You’d better take me, Marcia; in the long run you’ll find me nicer.’
Marcia shook her head, but she did not draw away her hand. ‘Really, Paul, I don’t know—and there’s nothing I hate so much in the world as making up my mind. You shouldn’t ask such unanswerable things.’
‘Look, mamma! aren’t the cloisters lovely?’ Margaret’s voice suddenly sounded across the little court. ‘Oh, there are Marcia and Paul over there! We wondered where you had disappeared to.’
‘Oh, the deuce!’ Paul exclaimed as he put his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the pillar. ‘I told you,’ he added, with a laugh, ‘that my family always arrived when they were not wanted!’
They all strolled about together, and Marcia scarcely glanced at him again. But her consciousness was filled with his words, and it required all her self-possession to keep up her part of the conversation. As they started on, Mrs. Royston suggested that they stop a second time at the English cemetery just within the gate. Marcia, looking at her watch, saw with a feeling of relief that she would have to go straight on if she were to catch Mrs. Copley and Gerald in time for the six o’clock train. Bidding them good-bye at the Porta San Paolo, she hastily and emphatically refused Paul’s proposition to drive to the station with her.
‘No, indeed, Mr. Dessart,’ she called out, as he was making arrangements with Mrs. Royston to meet later at the hotel, ‘I don’t want you to come with me; I shouldn’t think of taking you away. My aunt will be at the station, and I am perfectly capable of getting there alone. Really, I don’t want to trouble you.’
He put his foot on the carriage-step.
‘It’s no trouble,’ he smiled.
‘No, no; I would rather go alone. I shall really be angry if you come,’ she insisted in a low tone.