“I remembered it,” he exclaimed, “every minute of the time! And I couldn’t help being sorry we were not greater friends than we are—yet.”
He said those words in a low, meaning tone, and somehow that little interchange of words spoilt the girl’s pleasant feeling of being at ease in his company. Why had he said that? She hoped he was not going to try to flirt with her! Lily would have been very much surprised, and even indignant, had someone told her that Count Beppo Polda had been doing nothing else since they had first met one another an hour ago.
Even so, she felt just a little nervous as she saw the three figures emerging slowly from the orange grove; but the Countess said not a word as to her son’s having disappointed her with regard to the time of his arrival; and she pretended to think it quite natural that he should be staying at an hotel. With regard to that, however, Beppo had the grace to say a few apologetic words, explaining, what he had not told Lily, that some friends of his were staying at the Hidalgo, and that he had promised long ago that when these people came to Monte Carlo he would be one of their party.
Lily made more than one effort on that afternoon to leave Beppo alone with his parents. Surely they must have things to say to one another, after their long separation? But both the young man and his mother seemed determined that she should stay with them all the time.
At last she went up to dress for dinner, and she had put on the pretty muslin dress Aunt Cosy so much admired, and had wished her to put on that morning—when, opening the door of her room, she suddenly heard Beppo’s voice coming from below.
He was speaking, very sternly and decidedly, in English.
“A promise is a promise, mamma! I absolutely counted on that money. I had hoped to stay with you till the New Year. As it is, I must go back to Rome in a very few days.”
Lily heard the murmured answer: “If you should receive the money within, say, a week, could you then stay on?”
“Certainly I could.”
And then some one—probably the Countess—walked quickly across to the door of the small sitting-room at the bottom of the staircase, and shut the door. Lily felt sorry she had heard so much, or so little.