Sir William delivered to his nephew a severe lecture. Then he telephoned the newspaper offices with the idea of having any possible news of his nephew's incarceration suppressed. In this endeavor he was unsuccessful. Two papers contained an account of the arrest, and the more sensational sheet of the two declared that Rodrigo, son of Count Angelo Torriani and nephew of "London's leading merchant-knight, Sir William Newbold," was the fiancé of Sophie Binner and that they were to be married shortly. Rodrigo denied this vehemently to his uncle and was indeed just as angry about it as was Sir William. He saw in it evidence that Sophie had prevaricated to the newspapers, had used his ill fortune as a means of securing notoriety and possibly of binding him publicly to an alliance that did not exist.
He resolved to call upon her and break off any possible entanglement with her.
He confronted her in her apartment in the middle of the next afternoon. She looked especially lovely, her spun-gold tresses in informal disarray and her beauty encased in a silken lounging gown. But Rodrigo was firm. He accused her of exploiting last night's episode in the papers, of giving out news of an engagement that was false. Though she denied this, at first poutingly, then coyly and finally with considerable vehemence not unmixed with vulgarity, Rodrigo insisted. He worked her into a tempest and, at the climax, dramatically walked out of the room and, as he thought, of her life.
During the two years following his graduation from Oxford, Rodrigo had vague ambitions to become a painter and spent considerable time browsing about the galleries of England, Spain, France and his native Italy. He had a workroom fitted up in the palace of the Torrianis and did some original work in oil that was not without merit. But he worked spasmodically. His heart was not in it. He knew good painting too well to believe that his was an outstanding talent, and he lacked ambition therefore to concentrate upon developing it.
In the pursuit of pleasure and the spending of money he was more whole-hearted. He skied and tobogganed at St. Moritz, gambled at Monte Carlo, laughed at Montmartre's attempts to shock him, and flirted in all three places. Upon the invitation of the bobby-assaulting American Rhodes scholar, Terhune by name, now squandering his South Dakotan father's money in New York under the pretence of making a career in architecture, Rodrigo visited America. America, to Rodrigo, was represented by the Broadway theatre and nightclub belt between dusk and dawn. Having in a few weeks exhausted his funds and finding his cabled requests for more greeted with a strange reticence, Rodrigo started for home. Three days out from New York he received the cable announcing to him Count Angelo Torriani's sudden death.
Rodrigo had adored and respected his quiet, high-minded English mother, from whom he had inherited the thin vein of pure gold concealed deep down below the veneer of selfishness and recklessness that coated his character. He loved his father, from whom he drew the superficial and less desirable traits of his personality. Loved him and, without respecting him particularly, treated him as he would an older brother of kindred tastes and faults.
His father's death shook Rodrigo down considerably for a while. It sobered him, made him suddenly aware of his appalling aloneness in a world of many acquaintances but not an understanding relative nor close friend. The secondary calamity of having been, out of a clear sky, left penniless and in debt did not at first impress itself upon him. When the late Count Torriani's will was read, revealing the surprisingly devastated condition of the Torriani finances, and debtors began to present their claims, Rodrigo, now Count Rodrigo faced the realization that his whole mode of life must be changed.
He dismissed the servants, keeping Maria because she refused to go, even after being informed that she would probably have to serve without pay if she stayed. He finally brought himself to talking with an agent at Naples about renting the palace and selling some of the works of art which it contained. The agent was very brisk and business-like. He jumped up and down from his chair and rubbed his hands continually, like an American. Rodrigo was irritated by the vulgarian. He abruptly left the matter and the realtor up in the air and jumped into his car outside. As he swung along the shore of the bay he was in very low spirits, lonesome and as nearly depressed with life as he had ever been. In his preoccupation he paid only subconscious attention to the road ahead and the swift speed at which his car was traveling. He heard suddenly a shriek and flashed his eyes in its direction just in time to avoid killing a girl.
In the flash he saw that the girl was dark, and beautiful in a wildflower-like manner. She was also very dusty from walking. In the torrent of oaths which she poured after him, she furthermore revealed herself as charmingly coarse and unrestrained. Rodrigo cheered up. After the weeks of grief and loneliness, and particularly after the Naples realtor, he found himself wanting ardently to talk to a woman, any woman. He stopped the car and slowly backed up even with the approaching girl. She continued to swear at him. He smiled. When she had gradually quieted, he apologized and offered her a seat beside him. Her angry face relaxed, she pouted, and ended by accepting.
In a few days he had drifted into a fast ripening friendship with Rosa Minardi, who was childlike, was no tax upon his conversational charms or ingenuity, and who liked him very much. Her mother was dead, her father was away in Rome on some mysterious errand. Rodrigo badly needed any sort of companionship, and Rosa filled the need.