She moved back a little with a warning gesture—and his words were interrupted by the Abbe, who glancing from one to the other in a little surprise, said, as he bent reverently over her hand and kissed it,—
"We must be going, Cyrillon!"
Another few moments and Angela was left alone to think over, and try to realise the strange and rapidly-occurring events of the day. Whatever her thoughts were they seemed for a long time to be of a somewhat April-like character, for her eyes brimmed over with tears even while she smiled.
XVII.
In one of the few remaining streets of Rome which the vandal hand of the modern builder and restorer has not meddled with, stands the "Casa D'Angeli", a sixteenth-century building fronted with wonderfully carved and widely projecting balconies—each balcony more or less different in design, yet forming altogether in their entirety the effect of complete sculptural harmony. The central one looks more like a cathedral shrine than the embrasure of a window, for above it angels' heads look out from the enfolding curves of their own tall wings, and a huge shield which might serve as a copy of that which Elaine kept bright for Lancelot, is poised between, bearing a lily, a cross, and a heart engraven in its quarterings. Here, leaning far forward to watch the intense gold of the Roman moon strike brightness and shadow out of the dark uplifted pinions of her winged stone guardians, stood Sylvie Hermenstein, who, in her delicate white attire, with the moonbeams resting like a halo on her soft hair, might have easily passed for some favoured saint whom the sculptured angels were protecting. And yet she was only one whom the world called "a frivolous woman of society, who lived on the admiration of men". So little did they know her,—so little indeed does the world know about any of us. It was true that Sylvie, rich, lovely, independent, and therefore indifferent to opinions, lived her own life very much according to her own ideas,—but then those ideas were far more simple and unworldly than anybody gave her credit for. She to whom all the courts of Europe were open, preferred to wander in the woods alone, reading some favourite book, to almost any other pleasure,—and as for the admiration which she won by a look or turn of her head wherever she went, nothing in all the world so utterly bored her as this influence of her own charm. For she had tried men and found them wanting. With all the pent-up passion of her woman's soul she longed to be loved,—but what she understood by love was a much purer and more exalted emotion than is common among men and women. She was suffering just now from an intense and overpowering ennui. Rome was beautiful, she averred, but dull. Stretching her fair white arms out over the impervious stone-angels she said this, and more than this, to someone within the room, who answered her in one of the most delightfully toned voices in the world—a voice that charmed the ear by its first cadences, and left the listener fascinated into believing that its music was the expression of a perfectly harmonious mind.
"You seem very discontented," said the voice, speaking in English, "But really your pathway is one of roses!"
"You think so?" and Sylvie turned her head quickly round and looked at her companion, a handsome little man of some thirty-five years of age, who stretching himself lazily full length in an arm-chair was toying with the silky ears of an exceedingly minute Japanese spaniel, Sylvie's great pet and constant companion. "Oh, mon Dieu! You, artist and idealist though you are—or shall I say as you are supposed to be," and she laughed a little, "you are like all the rest of your sex! Just because you see a woman able to smile and make herself agreeable to her friends, and wear pretty clothes, and exchange all the bon mots of badinage and every-day flirtation, you imagine it impossible for her to have any sorrow!"
"There is only one sorrow possible to a woman," replied the gentleman, who was no other than Florian Varillo, the ideal of Angela Sovrani's life, smiling as he spoke with a look in his eyes which conveyed an almost amorous meaning.
Sylvie left the balcony abruptly, and swept back into the room, looking a charming figure of sylph-like slenderness and elegance in her clinging gown of soft white satin showered over with lace and pearls.
"Only one sorrow!" she echoed, "And that is—?"