“I have put up at the Hidalgo Hotel,” he went on. “It is very select and comfortable.”
Lily remembered the hours she and Cristina had spent in making what was evidently the real spare room of La Solitude pleasant and habitable from the point of view of a highly civilised young man. Also, it must be confessed that she felt a little disappointed. Life at La Solitude was sometimes very dull!
“I suppose some letter you wrote was lost in the post. I know that your mother thought you were going to stay here.”
Beppo looked at her with a rather funny look, and then lowering his voice slightly, he exclaimed: “La Solitude is a delightful place—but the last time I stayed here I said to myself, ‘Never again!’ You see, I’m used to being able to take a hot bath whenever I feel like it! Then there’s another reason. If I stay at La Solitude it becomes a delicate matter for me to join the Club! The rule is absolute with regard to land owners in Monaco; none of them may play either in the Casino or at the Club.”
“You know what mamma is like,” he went on confidentially. “If I had told her that I was going to an hotel, there would have been endless discussions and long letters—for my dear mamma is a great letter-writer! I intended to send up a note this morning, but I was having such a splendid game of tennis;” he smiled a little self-consciously. “I was playing a single with the Spanish champion! So I really could not tear myself away!”
Lily felt suddenly revolted by Beppo’s callous indifference to the disappointment he had inflicted on his devoted father and mother.
“I think you ought to go down into the town now,” she said firmly, “and try to find them. It’ll be a dreadful blow to them if they go to the station and find that you are not there.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do—I’ll send down Cristina!” She asked herself why the deep caressing voice had such a curiously attractive lure about it.
And even as he spoke her name the old waiting woman appeared at the open drawing-room window. Joy flashed into her face, and a moment later his arms were round her neck, and he was kissing her affectionately.
A few seconds ago Lily had felt as if she hated Beppo for his selfishness, and utter lack of consideration for his parents. But now she saw that there was, after all, a very kindly side to his nature.