She had not analysed her emotions very thoroughly, but she felt a decided trepidation at the thought of seeing Paul. The trepidation, however, was not altogether an unpleasant sensation. The scene in the cloisters had returned to her mind many times, and she had taken several brief excursions into the future. What would he say the next time they met? Would he renew the same subject, or would he tacitly overlook that afternoon, and for the time let everything be as it had been before? She hoped that the latter would be the case. It would give a certain piquancy to their relations, and she was not ready—just at present—to make up her mind.
Paul, on his side, had also pondered the question somewhat. Events were not moving with the rapidity he wished. Marcia, evidently, would not come into Rome, and he could think of no valid excuse for going out to the villa. His pessimistic forecast of events had proved true. Holy Week found the Roystons still in the city, treating themselves to orgies of church-going. As he followed his aunt from church to church (there are in the neighbourhood of three hundred and seventy-five in Rome, and he says they visited them all that week) he indulged in many speculations as to the state of Marcia’s mind in regard to himself. At times he feared he had been over-precipitate; at others, that he had not been precipitate enough.
His aunt and cousins returned from a flying visit to the villa, with the report that Marcia had adopted a boy and a dog and was solicitously engaged with their education. ‘What did she say about me, Madge?’ Paul boldly inquired.
‘She said you were a very impudent fellow,’ Margaret retorted; and in response to his somewhat startled expression she added more magnanimously: ‘You needn’t be so vain as to think she said anything about you. She never even mentioned your name.’
Paul breathed a meditative ‘Ah!’ Marcia had not mentioned his name. It was not such a bad sign, that: she was thinking about him, then. If there were no other man—and he was vain enough to take her at her word—nothing could be better for his cause than a solitary week in the Sabine hills. He knew from present—and past—experience that an Italian spring is a powerful stimulant for the heart.
On Tuesday of Holy Week Mrs. Royston wakened slightly from her spiritual trance to observe that she had scarcely seen Marcia for as much as a week, and that as soon as Lent was over they must have the Copleys in to luncheon at the hotel.
‘Where’s the use of waiting till Lent’s over?’ Paul had inquired. ‘You needn’t make it a function. Just a sort of—family affair. If you invite them for Thursday, we can all go together to the tenebræ service at St. Peter’s. As this is Miss Copley’s first Easter in Rome, she might be interested.’
Accordingly a note arrived at the villa on Wednesday morning inviting the family—Gerald included—to breakfast the next day with the Roystons in Rome. On Thursday morning an acceptance—Gerald excluded—arrived at the Hôtel de Lourdres et Paris, and was followed an hour later by the Copleys themselves.
The breakfast went off gaily. Paul was his most expansive self, and the whole table responded to his mood. It was with a sense of gratification that Marcia saw her uncle, who had lately been so grave, laughingly exchanging nonsense with the young man. She felt, though she would scarcely have acknowledged it to herself, a certain property right in Paul, and it pleased her subtly when he pleased other people. She sat next to him at the table, and occasionally, beneath his laughter and persiflage, she caught an undertone of meaning. So long as they were not alone and he could not go beyond a certain point, she found their relations on a distinctly satisfying basis.
In spite of Paul’s manœuvres, he did not find himself alone with Marcia that afternoon. There was always a cousin in attendance. Mr. and Mrs. Copley, declining the spectacle of the tenebræ in St. Peter’s—they had seen it before—left shortly after luncheon. As they were leaving, Mr. Copley remarked to Mrs. Royston—