A twitter of approval, led by Alma, came from the other women, but I was quivering with anger and I said:
"Then marriage is an hypocrisy and an imposture. If I found I loved somebody better than my husband, I should go to him in spite of the law, and society, and title and . . . and everything."
"Of course you would, my dear," said the Countess, smiling at me as at a child, "but that's because you are such a sweet, simple, innocent little Irish bambino."
It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited to the Roman Hunt. I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to use me in order to "save her face" in relation to my husband, induced me to drive them out in a motor-car to the place on the Campagna where they were to mount their horses.
"Dear sweet girl!" said Alma. "How could we possibly go without you?"
It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my husband in his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San Giovanni, and past the osterie where the pleasure-loving Italian people were playing under the pergolas with their children, until we came to the meeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane.
A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there with their horses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband with great cordiality. What they thought of me I do not know, except that I was a childish and complacent wife; and when at the sound of the horn the hunt began, and my husband and Alma went prancing off with the rest, without once looking back, I asked myself in my shame and distress if I could bear my humiliation much longer.
But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure. A cheerful voice on the other side of the car said:
"Good morning, Lady Raa."
It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer. His ship had put into Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he had run up to look at Rome.