The Marchesa went up to the lilac and sniffed at them delicately.
“This was Beppo’s gift to me this morning,” she said. “He went out after seeing you, and got them for me—partly, I suppose, to console me for the fact that he will not be our escort back to Rome to-morrow!”
While she spoke she went on moving about the room, and Lily suddenly told herself that her companion was like a beautiful, restless, untamed animal. Her wonderful eyes—they were like pools of light in her pale face—were darting this way and that. And again the English girl asked herself with a kind of apprehension whether the Marchesa had indeed the fatal maleficent gift, which the superstitious believe may bring sorrow, and even shame, on those its possessor loves best?
“I think we will sit over here,” said her hostess at last. “But first, my dear Lily, excuse me a moment. I will take off my toque, for it is heavy. Even the best Parisian modistes have now lost the art of making a hat sit lightly on the wearer’s brow. I shall be more comfortable without it. I have a headache. Yesterday’s adventure in the mountains was very tiring.”
She left the room, and Lily, who had been sitting down, got up and walked, hardly knowing what she was doing, over to a big writing-table. One of the drawers was open, and she could not help seeing that within the drawer was the wrapper of the parcel she had brought for Beppo.
The Marchesa came back. “We will sit in the window,” she observed, “so that while we talk we can enjoy the glorious view.”
She pushed two easy chairs toward the bow window, so arranging them that while she herself was in the shadow, Lily’s face was in the full light.
“And now,” she said, “sit down! We have not got very long. I think that Beppo did not like leaving us alone, eh? Men are like that. They detest realities, they do not like the truth!”
Lily would have liked to combat this rather unkind view of the stronger sex, but her hostess was speaking with a kind of suppressed energy which made her feel she could not interrupt.
“Yes, I am all for the truth! I do not believe in the French proverb, ‘All truth is not good to say,’ and I know that English people always tell the truth?”