“To your lesson, Galimberti?” inquired Lucia, indifferently.
“Indeed, I find the time for it has slipped by. I had no idea that it was so late. After all it’s no great loss to my pupils. Will you have your lesson to-morrow, Signorina?”
“To-morrow! I don’t think I can; I feel too fatigued. Not to-morrow.”
“Wednesday, then?”
“I will let you know,” she replied, bored.
When, with a brick-coloured flush on his yellow cheeks, Galimberti had left them, all three were conscious of a sense of discomfort.
“Poor devil!” exclaimed Andrea, at last.
“Yes, but he is a bore,” added Alberto.
“What’s to be done? These ladies, in their exquisite good-nature, forget that he is only a teacher; and he gets bewildered and forgets it too. He must suffer a good deal when he comes to his senses.”
“Oh! he is an unhappy creature; but when I am sick or sad, the poor thing becomes an incubus: I don’t know how to shake him off.”