"Oh, I'm glad you didn't hurry back. What good would it have done then?"
There was a touch of constraint in her voice.
"You must have thought I should be in bed."
"Yes, we did."
"And so I ought to be now. I believe I am tremendously tired, but—but I'm so tremendously something else that I hardly know."
The constraint had gone.
"The signora is happy because she is back in my country," Gaspare remarked, with pride and an air of shrewdness.
He nodded his head. The faded roses shook above his ears. Hermione smiled at him.
"He knows all about it," she said. "Well, if we are ever to go to bed——"
Gaspare looked from her to his padrone.