She flung the challenge across the table. The Count wearily shrugged his shoulders while the Poet, with saturnine face, seemed to enjoy the situation.
The Principessa, stirring herself, broke the pregnant silence that followed.
"Cara Emilia," she said, "have you heard of Bellanti's misfortune?"
"No——" the Countess turned quickly—"what has happened?" Don Cesare watched her, a mischievous light in his black eyes, as she went on languidly. "His sister is my dearest friend and she hasn't written to me for weeks! I was really beginning to wonder if she were ill. What is the matter?"
"He's ruined." The Princess turned up her hands with an eloquent gesture of finality. "He was always gambling, as you know, and then he took to borrowing money—enormous sums, I am told—on the strength of his Aunt's fortune—Donna Teresa Bellanti."
"Did you ever meet her?" She paused in her story to open her fan and, lazily, wafted it backward and forward before her pale middle-aged face.
"I don't think so." The Countess smiled, feeling across the narrow table her husband's persistent glance and the silence of the rest of the party.
"She did not care for society—she was always very religious, you know—and has never married—so everyone thought she would leave her money to her nephew."
"Well!" The Countess was impatient. McTaggart felt a shade of pity. He guessed the Princess was amusing herself by prolonging the other's anxiety.
"She's taken the veil," said the older woman. "You know she's stayed for the last two years at her favourite convent—Our Lady of Loretto—and it seems she was finishing her novitiate. And all her wealth is to go to the Church."