“You can send it now by someone who must wait for an answer,” she explained. “I shall stay here until it comes.”
“Very well,” he said sulkily, and he went out into the hall to confer with the porter. “An important letter, Eccellenza? A vetturino will take it for you—”
Olive heard the opening and shutting of doors, the shrill whistle answered by harsh, raucous cries, the rattling of wheels. Filippo came back to her.
“I have done my part.” Then, looking at her closely, he saw that she was very pale. “Is all you have implied and I have written true?”
“No.”
“You must love him very much.”
“I? Not at all, as you understand love.”
The ensuing half-hour seemed long to the girl; Filippo talked desultorily, but there were intervals of silence. She was too tired to attempt to answer him, and, besides, his evident restlessness, his inattention, afforded her some acrid amusement. He was like a boy, eager in pursuit of the bird in the bush, heedless of the poor thing fluttering, dying in his hand. It was now near the dinner-hour, and people were coming into the lounge to await the sounding of the gong; from where Olive sat she could see all the entrances and exits—as in a glass darkly—in the clouded surface of a mirror that hung on the wall and reflected the white gleam of shirt fronts, the shimmer of silks, and she was quick to note that Filippo was interested in what she saw as a pink blur.
His love was as fully winged for flight as any Beast of the book of Revelations; it was swift as a sword to pierce and be withdrawn. He could not be altogether loyal for a day. Olive’s heart was filled with pity for the women who had cared.
When, at last, the answer to the letter came, the Prince gave it to her to read. It was very short, a mere scrawl of scarlet ink on the brown, rough-edged paper that was one of Camille’s affectations.