"The Signore will not be here for the races?"
The man's voice was so doleful that McTaggart hesitated, remembering they were fixed for Sunday.
"Well—we might stay over the week-end, and go on Monday—perhaps that's better."
The man blessed him audibly with the gentle familiarity that seems to exist in that old land between the nobility and their servants.
"You can take a holiday on Sunday—so long as you get my packing done—and say good-bye to Lucia?" He laughed at the man's guilty face.
"Ahi!—That for the women!" Mario, recovering himself, gave an expressive, scornful shrug—"But the races are a different matter!—and I hear 'La Luna' is sure to win."
McTaggart smiled, cutting short the man's chatter, and went down to receive his guests, a little bored by the coming lunch.
His fears were amply justified.
The poet was in a sombre mood, the Principessa plainly anxious.
"It's his new Tragedy," she whispered as they settled themselves at the table—"he is so sensitive, my dear—the penalty of genius."