“No, Signorina. It is on the Dark Continent.”
She had never heard of the Dark Continent, but she only shrugged her shoulders, incuriously, and leant further across the table to examine a black pearl pin, shaped something like a death’s head, which Vansittart wore in his tie, and thus brought her smiling lips very near his face.
While she leant thus, with the tip of her finger touching the pearl, and her eyes lifted interrogatively, a heavy hand was laid upon Vansittart’s shoulder, and he was half twisted out of his chair—tilted after the manner of chairs on which young men sit—by sheer brute force on the part of the owner of the hand.
“Come out of that!” said a voice that was thickened by drink.
Vansittart was on his feet in an instant, facing a man as tall as himself, and a good deal more bulky—a son of Anak, sandy-haired, pallid, save for red spots on his cheek-bones, spots that burnt like flame.
He was scowling savagely, breathless with rage. Lisa had risen as quickly as Vansittart, and Lisa’s aunt had moved towards the new-comer in evident trouble of mind.
“Signor Giovanni,” she faltered, “who would have thought to see you in Venice to-night?”
“Not you, evidently, you wicked old hag—nor you, hussy!” cried the man, furious with jealousy and drink. “I’ve caught you at your games, have I, you good-for-nothing slut! You couldn’t stay indoors like a decent woman, but you must needs walk the streets late at night with this Cockney cad here.”
“Take care what you say to her—or to me,” said Vansittart, in that muffled bass which means a dangerous kind of anger.
He put his arm round Fiordelisa, drawing her towards him as if she belonged to him and it were his place to guard her from every assailant. The crowd made a ring about them, looking on, amused and interested, with no thought of interference which might spoil sport. The comedy some of them had seen at the Goldoni Theatre that night was not half so amusing as this bit out of the comedy of real life—the cosmopolitan comedy of human passion.