“I’ve just run up to say that the car has come round. Are you ready? Have you had your rest and your secret talk?”
He looked sharply from the one woman to the other.
“Yes,” said the Marchesa. “And I think that we are friends for ever!”
As she turned to Lily there was an urgent appeal in her lovely eyes.
Lily answered a little shyly. “Yes, I hope we shall be real friends—always.”
And, oddly enough, in spite of the trying moments she had gone through, and in spite of the rather mixed feelings with which she even now regarded the Marchesa, she did feel that this strange woman would henceforth be more to her than a mere acquaintance.
Even so, as she followed the Marchesa into the lift, as she answered more or less mechanically Beppo’s gay little remarks and questions, she felt bewildered and oppressed.
Lily Fairfield had always lived among very straightforward, simple people—people, too, who were conventional, who never indulged in intrigue. And now she felt that as long as she lived she would never forget seeing the beautiful Marchesa Pescobaldi sink down on her knees and beg so earnestly, so pathetically, for forgiveness.
Many strange thoughts jostled themselves in the girl’s mind while the three made their rapid transit downstairs. Twenty-five thousand francs? A thousand pounds? She felt a little frightened when she thought of her somewhat lonely walk from La Solitude that morning. Aunt Cosy ought to have given her at any rate a hint that she was carrying something valuable!
As to how the money had been obtained, she, Lily, told herself that, after all, the Poldas must have some fortune of their own, if not very much. Take her own case. She knew that now she was twenty-one she could, if she chose to do so, sell out certain securities from which came her income. All that had been explained to her, very carefully, by Uncle Tom, and by his solicitor, Mr. Bowering, who had charge of all the Fairfield family business. No doubt the Countess, whenever she thought Beppo hard up, sold out certain securities, thus making herself, of course, the poorer, but doing it for her son’s sake.