Don Calixto and the Canon went away to Spain. Cæsar thought he was wasting time in Rome and that he ought to get out, but he remained. He kept wondering why Susanna Marchmont had left and never written him.
Twice he asked about her at the Hotel Excelsior, and was told that she had not returned.
One evening at the beginning of May, when he had managed to decide to pack up and go, he received a card from Susanna, telling him of her arrival and inviting him to have tea at the Ristorante del Castello dei Cesari.
Cæsar immediately left the hotel and took a cab, which carried him to the top of the Aventine Hill.
He got out at the entrance to the garden of the Ristorante, went across it, and out on a large terrace.
There were a number of Americans having tea, and in one group of them was Susanna.
“How late you come!” she said.
“I have just received your card. And what did you do in Corfu? How did things go down there?”
“Very well indeed. It is all wonderful. And I have been in Epirus and Albania, too.”
Susanna related her impressions of those countries, with many details, which, surely, she had read in Baedeker.