Finishing, he nodded toward the door, where a servant was standing, and presently rose to take leave. His evening visits never exceeded an hour, and, since he did not like to disturb the pleasure of social intercourse with the thought of going, a servant was always instructed to intimate to him when the hour was past.
“The only parting which I wish to foresee and prepare for is the final one,” he said smilingly.
“What a terrible sound that expression ‘final parting’ has!” Bianca exclaimed, seeming to be already pained at the thought of losing this new friend.
“That is because you interpret it wrongly,” he replied, with a kind glance at her. “You know it does not mean everlasting separation, but that there are to be no more partings, because after the next meeting we need never part again. It is simply the end of a long pain.”
He gave her his hand, which she kissed as naturally as an Italian would have done, though it was the first time she had rendered that homage to any one.
When he had gone, the company went up to the loggia, which was one of the attractions of the house.
“You see we have a private stairway,”
the Contessa M—— said, opening a narrow door hidden in the panelling of the room they had been sitting in. “But it is so very narrow, enclosed in the thickness of the wall, that I will not ask you to go by it.”
“I do wish she would let us go this way, though,” Isabel whispered to the Signora. “How romantic it is! Who knows who may have slipped up or down that stair in the wall, who may have stood listening behind the panel while people were talking in the sala, and what may have been revealed or hidden there? It is like a chapter out of a tragical story—one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s, for example. Do you think we might not go up?”
Their hostess had, however, already led the way to a more commodious stair, and they could but follow. Besides, it is only in very romantic stories that ladies in beautiful silk and gauze dresses can go through secret and narrow stairways, cobwebbed attics, and dusty, haunted chambers, without detriment to their toilets, and the young contessa wore that evening a lace flounce which she might not care to injure even for the sake of hospitality.