Zinka laid her hands on the keys and began. Her voice sounded through the room a little husky at first, but very sweet, like the note of a forest bird.
Never before had she sat down to sing without bringing him to her side, even from the remotest corner of the room, at the very first notes; and now, involuntarily, she looked up to meet his gaze--but he was sitting by Polyxena, on a small sofa, in a very familiar attitude, leaning back, holding one foot on the other knee, and laughing at something that she was whispering to him. Zinka lost her self-command and was suddenly paralyzed with self-consciousness. She could not sing that song before him. Her voice broke; she forgot the accompaniment; felt about the notes, struck two or three wrong chords and at length rose with an awkward laugh:
"I cannot remember anything this evening!" she stammered.
Polyxena had some spiteful comment to make, of course, and Sempaly grew angry; he was on the point of rising to go to Zinka and console her for her failure, but before he could quite make up his mind to move, Nini had risen. In spite of her shyness she made her way straight across the room to Zinka and said something kind to her. Sempaly stayed where he was; but as they were leaving, he put on Nini's cloak for her, and said in a low tone: "Nini, you are a good fellow!" and he kissed her hand.
Sempaly's attentions had made Zinka the fashion; his sudden discontinuance, not merely of attentions, but of any but the barest civilities, of course, made her the laughing-stock of all their circle. The capital caricature that Sempaly had drawn of Sterzl and his sister that evening at the Vulpinis' was remembered once more; Madame de Gandry, to whom Sempaly had been very civil till he had neglected her for Zinka, showed the sketch to all her acquaintance, with a plentiful seasoning of spiteful insinuations. Every one was ready to laugh at the "little adventuress" who had come to Rome to bid for a prince's coronet and who had been obliged to submit to such condign humiliation.
The leaders of foreign society vied with each other in doing honor to the Jatinskys. Madame de Gandry set the example by giving a party at which Ristori was engaged to recite; Sterzl was of course, invited; his mother and sister were left out. It was the first time since Zinka's appearance at the Ilsenberghs' that she had been omitted from any entertainment, however select. Many ladies of the international circle followed Madame de Gandry's lead, wishing like her to make a parade before the Austrians of their own exclusiveness, and at the same time to be revenged on Zinka for many a saucy speech she had ventured to make when she was still one of the initiated--of the sacred inner circle. The Italian society of Rome did not of course trouble itself about all these trumpery subtleties, and behaved to Zinka with the same superficial politeness as before.
She, for her part, took no more note of their amenities than she did of the pin-pricks from the other side. If her feelings had not been so deeply engaged by Sempaly she would no doubt have taken all these petty social humiliations very hardly; but her anguish of soul had dulled her shallower feelings. There is a form of suffering which deadens the senses and which mockery cannot touch. It was all the same to her whether she was invited or not--she could not bear to go anywhere. The idea of meeting Sempaly with his cousins was as terrible as death itself. She was an altered creature. A shy, scared smile was always on her lips, like the ghost of departed joys, her movements had lost all their elasticity, and her gait was more than ever like that of an angel whose wings have been clipped.
Baroness Sterzl, of course, still drove out regularly on the Corso, and made the most praiseworthy attempts to keep up a bowing acquaintance with her former friends, and as often as she could she went out in the evening--alone. There was some consolation too in the proud consciousness of having quarrelled with Madame de Gandry and being on visiting terms with all the Roman duchesses. The only thing that caused her any serious discomfort was her sister Wolnitzka's persistent and indiscreet catechism as to the state of affairs between Zinka and Sempaly. She herself, out of mere idle bragging, had told Charlotte the first day of her arrival in Rome that Zinka's engagement was not yet made public.
Her aunt's coarse remarks and hints were fast driving Zinka crazy when Siegburg fortunately--perhaps intentionally, out of compassion for her--so frightened the mother and daughter, one evening when he met them at the palazetto, by his account of the Roman fever that they were panic-stricken, and fled the very next morning to Naples.