Urania asked Cornélie to come in, because it was not healthy out of doors now, at sunset, with the misty exhalations from the lake. The marchesa bowed coldly and stiffly, pinched her eyes together and pretended not to remember Cornélie very well.
"I can understand that," said Cornélie, smiling acidly. "You see different boarders at your pension every day and I stayed for a much shorter time than you reckoned on. I hope that you soon disposed of my rooms again, marchesa, and that you suffered no loss through my departure?"
The Marchesa Belloni looked at her in mute amazement. She was here, at San Stefano, in her element as a marchioness; she, the sister-in-law of the old prince, never spoke here of her foreigners' boarding-house; she never met her Roman guests here: they sometimes visited the castle, but only at fixed hours, whereas she spent the weeks of her summer villeggiatura here. And here she laid aside her plausible manner of singing the praises of a chilly room, her commercial habit of asking the most she dared. She here carried her curled leonine head with a lofty dignity; and, though she still wore her crystal brilliants in her ears, she also wore a brand-new spencer around her ample bosom. She could not help it, that she, a countess by birth, she, the Marchesa Belloni—the late marquis was a brother of the defunct princess—possessed no personal distinction, despite all her quarterings; but she felt herself to be, as indeed she was, an aristocrat. The friends, the monsignori whom she did sometimes meet at San Stefano, promoted the Pension Belloni in their conversation and called it the Palazzo Belloni.
"Oh, yes," she said, at last, very coolly, blinking her eyes with an aristocratic air, "I remember you now ... although I've forgotten your name. A friend of the Princess Urania, I believe? I am glad to see you again, very glad.... And what do you think of your friend's marriage?" she asked, as she went up the stairs beside Cornélie, between Mino da Fiesole's marble candelabra.
Gilio, still angry and flushed and not at all calmed by the kiss, had moved away. Urania had run on ahead. The marchesa knew of Cornélie's original opposition, of her former advice to Urania and she was certain that Cornélie had acted in this way because she herself had had views on Gilio. There was a note of triumphant irony in her question.
"I think it was made in Heaven," Cornélie replied, in a bantering tone. "I believe there is a blessing on their marriage."
"The blessing of his holiness," said the marchesa, naively, not understanding.
"Of course: the blessing of his holiness ... and of Heaven."
"I thought you were not religious?"
"Sometimes, when I think of their marriage, I become very religious. What peace for the Princess Urania's soul when she became a Catholic! What happiness in life, to marry il caro Gilio! There is still peace and happiness left in life."