‘Luigi, you are a good man, far too good for me. Listen! I must gratify my revenge; till then, all must wait. Things alter; men change; but when the time comes, and you are still the same, say “Come to me,” and I shall be by your side.’
‘I shall never change!’ he replied as he touched the outstretched hand with his lips gently.
Slowly and sadly they walked back towards the house—Genevieve calm and collected now; Salvarini, mournfully resigned; pity and rage—pity for the girl, and rage against her deceiver—alternately supreme in his heart. For some time neither spoke.
‘Will you come in?’ she asked.
‘Not now,’ he replied, feeling instinctively that his presence would only be an unwelcome restraint. ‘I had a message to bring from Carlo. He and Sir Geoffrey and Miss Charteris are coming to-morrow.—And now, remember, if you want a friend, you have one in me.—Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye, Luigi,’ she said mechanically. ‘You are very good. I shall remember.’
Strangers coming to-morrow. The words bear on her brain like the roar of countless hammers. Strangers coming; and how was she to meet them now, with this wild sense of wrong burning within her vengeful Italian heart, bruised but not crushed? She walked slowly up-stairs and sat down in her room, thinking, till the evening light began to wane, and the lamps of distant Rome to twinkle out one by one. The very silence of the place oppressed her.
‘Are you coming down to supper, Genevieve?’
She aroused herself at these words, and looking up, saw a child standing there before her. She was regarding her sister somewhat curiously, and somewhat pitifully too; the latter, child as she was, did not fail to notice the pale face and dark-ringed eyes. She approached the older girl, throwing her arms round her neck and kissing her gently. ‘What is the matter, caro?’ she asked in her soft liquid Italian. ‘Have you one of your headaches again, sister? Let me comfort you.’
‘I have something more than headache, Lucrece—some pain that no soft words of yours can charm away. Run away down-stairs, child; I am not fit to talk to you now.’