"It was anything rather than funny to me," said the countess ruefully. "By the way, though, she did tell me one thing--that her niece Zenaïde Sterzl ... Well, what is there to laugh at now?"
"Zenaïde Sterzl! the name is a poem in itself," cried Polyxena; "it is as though an English woman were named Belinda Brown, or a French girl called Roxalane Dubois."
"Well, it seems from what the old woman told me that the fair Zenaïde is about to relinquish the graceless name of Sterzl for one of the noblest names in Austria--that is the old idiot's story. It has not yet been made public, so she could not tell me the bridegroom's name, but Zenaïde is as good as betrothed to a young count--an attaché to the Austrian embassy. Who on earth can it be?--You ought to know!"
"Ah, ah! Is it you?" said Polyxena turning to Siegburg. But Siegburg shook his head, stroking his yellow moustache to conceal a malicious smile as he watched Sempaly's conspicuous annoyance. "Or is it you, Nicki?" the young countess went on--"I congratulate you on marrying into such a delightful family!"
But such a marked effect of embarrassment was produced by her speech that she was suddenly silent.
"I know nothing of it," said Sempaly with a gloomy scowl. "That old chatterbox's imagination is positively stupendous."
The play of light on the gold lace of the uniforms and the brass instruments is fast fading away and the sheen of the glossy-leaved evergreens is almost extinct. "Gran dio morir si giovane!" is the tune the band is playing. The sun is down, the day is dead, night shrouds the scene; the only color left is a dull glow behind St. Peter's like a dying fire.
"At the Ellis' this evening," Siegburg calls out to the ladies as he lifts his hat and turns away. The carriages make their way down the hill, past the Villa Medici, back into Rome, and their steady roar is like that of a torrent rushing to join the sea.
CHAPTER IV.
Mr. and Lady Julia Ellis--she was an earl's daughter--English people of enormous wealth and amazing condescension, had for many years spent the winters in Rome. In former times the lady's eccentricities had given rise to much discussion; now she was an old lady with white hair, fine regular features and much too fat arms. Like all English women of her day she appeared in a low gown on all occasions of full dress, and was fond of decking her head with a pink feather. Her husband was younger than she was and had a handsome, thoroughly English face, with a short beard and very picturesque curly white hair. His profile was rather like that of Mendelssohn, a fact of which he was exceedingly proud. Besides this he was proud of two other things: of his wife, who had been admired in her youth by King George IV. and of a very old umbrella, because Felix Mendelssohn had once borrowed it. He had a weakness for performing on the concertina and had musical evenings once a week.