"I'm going home, too."
She half hoped that she might still find Cesare at the house, and so have at least a half hour with him before he went out. He was very slow about dressing; he never hurried, even when he had an urgent appointment. Perhaps she would find him in his room, tying his white tie, putting a flower in his button-hole. She deposited the Marchesa Scibilia at the palace in the Via Gerolomini, and bade her coachman hurry home.
"Has the Signore gone out?" she asked the porter.
No, he had not gone out. The porter was about to pull his bell-cord, to ring for a footman, but Anna instinctively stopped him. She wished to surprise her husband. She put her finger to her lips, smiling, as she met one of the maids, and crossed the house noiselessly, arriving thus at the door of Cesare's room, the door that gave upon the vestibule, not the one which communicated with the passage between his room and Anna's.
The door was not locked. She opened it softly. She would surprise her husband so merrily. But, having opened the door, she found herself still in darkness, for Cesare had lowered the two portières of heavy olive velvet.
A sudden interior force prevented Anna's lifting the curtains and showing herself. She remained there behind them, perfectly concealed, and able to see and hear everything that went on in the room, through an aperture.
Cesare was in his dress-suit, with an immaculate white waistcoat, a watch-chain that went from his waistcoat-pocket to the pocket of his trousers, with a beautiful white gardenia in his button-hole, his handsome black moustaches freshly curled, and his whole air one of profound satisfaction. He was seated in a big leather arm-chair, his fine head resting on its brown cushions, against which the pallor of his face stood out charmingly.
He was not alone.
Laura, dressed in that soft white wool which seemed especially woven for her supple and flowing figure, with a bouquet of white roses in the cincture that passed twice loosely round her waist, with her blonde hair artistically held in place by small combs of tortoise-shell, and forming a sort of aureole about her brow and temples, the glory of her womanly beauty—Laura was in Cesare's room.