“La Signora Marchesa wishes to see you at once in her boudoir.”
The Marchesa had come straight from the motor to her own room, her head was still swathed in a white veil, and she had not even taken off her heavy sable coat. She had switched on the light on her entrance, and now she was searching in the drawers of her bureau for her cheque-book.
“Ah, well, gold perhaps,” she said after a while, impatiently, as she snapped open the chain purse that hung from her wrist. “Is that you, Miss Agar?”
Olive, seeing her counting out her money, like the queen in the nursery rhyme, had stopped short near the door. She paled a little as she understood this must be the sequel to what she had done, but she held her head high, and there was a light of defiance in the blue eyes.
“I have to speak to you very seriously.”
The Marchesa, a large woman, was slow and deliberate in all her movements. She took her place on a brocaded settee with the air of a statue of Juno choosing a pedestal, and began to draw off her gloves. “I greatly regret that this should be necessary.” She seemed prepared to clean Augean stables, and there was something judicial in her aspect too, but she did not look at Olive. “You know that I took you into my house on the recommendation of the music-teacher, Signora Giannini. It was foolish, I see that now. It has come to my knowledge that you had no right to enter here, no right to be with my daughter.” She paused. “You must understand perfectly what I mean,” she said impressively.
“No, I do not understand,” the girl said. “Will you explain, Marchesa?”
“Can you deny that you were involved in a most discreditable affair in Siena before you came here? That your intrigue—I hate to have to enter into the unsavoury details, Miss Agar, but you have forced me to it—that your intrigue with your cousin’s fiancé drove her to suicide, and that you were obliged to leave the place in consequence?”
“It is not true.”
“Ah, but your cousin killed herself?”