Zinka eats her beef-steak with the greatest calmness and an unmistakably good appetite; she is perfectly sweet and docile and natural; she has no suspicion that her name will to-morrow morning be in every mouth. Truyn is as pale as death; he has heard Madame de Gandry's whisper to her friend: "After this he must make her an offer."
PART II.
LENT.
CHAPTER I.
"I am glad to have found you," cried Truyn next morning as he entered Sempaly's room in the Palazzo di Venezia, and discovered him sipping his coffee after his late breakfast, with a book in his hand.
"I am delighted that you should for once have taken the trouble to climb up to me. I must show you my Francia--the dealer who sold it to me declares it is a Francia. But you look worried. What has brought you here?"
"I only wanted to know--to ask you whether you will drive out to Frascati with us to-day?"
"To Frascati!--This afternoon? What an idea!" exclaimed Sempaly; "and in any case I cannot join you for I am going to the Palatine at three o'clock with the Sterzls."
"Yes?" said Truyn looking uncommonly grave.
"May I offer you a cup of coffee?" asked Sempaly coolly.