Mrs. Denvil shook her finger playfully at the intruder, and resumed her conversation. She supposed mademoiselle was back among the trees. Mademoiselle was at home; Cecilia had run away from her to follow her mamma. This was the girl’s reading of San Donato’s message. She drew back, hurt and offended. She had failed. The slight childish form crossed to the parapet, and stood there, looking down on the Piazza del Popolo, where the pedestrians were dwarfed to pigmies. She thought of her absent father, who represented ever an earthly providence to her, by reason of mademoiselle’s admonition, the supply of pin-money, and the letters she wrote under dictation. She idealized this distant yet benign influence. Behind her the crowd increased, the music rose and fell, the carriages moved rapidly past each other in a maze of wheels. On the horizon the red ball of a sun dipped, shedding a tremulous rosy mist over St. Peter’s dome.
Cecilia turned, saw her mother’s landau again approaching, yielded to a childish impulse, and ran toward it, repenting of her rudeness to the count. He had always been so gentle, so tender with her, from the first. Her eyes were fixed on the maroon liveries; she strove to attract the count’s notice, approached the brink of gliding vehicles, then her foot slipped on the freshly sprinkled gravel; she fell, and the carriage passed over her.
A little heap lay in the road; other horses were reined in furiously, not to trample on it as well. The American lady had run over her own child. That blood-curdling shriek of horror! that jolt on a soft yielding substance was the passage of her wheels on her flesh, the additional weight of stout Countess di Moccoli and of Count Martellini aiding, if possible, in crushing out a fragile existence.
Later the count was confronted by a white stricken woman. He was full of sympathy and pity for his playmate; tears stood in his beautiful eyes.
“Leave us alone!” she said, fiercely, even wildly.
The count shrugged his shoulders, frowned, and departed. Palpable injustice in the capricious creature woman. He was a philosopher, and appeared at a diplomatic reception that evening. Matters might have been worse. As a sentimentalist he had made as much love as he dared to a pretty married woman whose husband was absent, while she was manifestly flattered by his attentions. Practically speaking, he as an impoverished noble had reaped advantage from his place as habitué of the circle of a rich American in a land where a nice percentage exists on custom. He had directed the money of Henry Denvil into those channels of expenditure which would benefit himself by skilful advice. The Nile voyage would set the world wholly at defiance.
Stout, good-natured Countess di Moccoli also appeared at the diplomatic reception that evening, and we may rest assured no mention was made of a young girl having been run over at the Pincio in the gilded salons where both moved. One does not mention illness and death in gilded salons, amid the ripple of music and laughter. One frequents these resorts to forget, if possible, such grim and ghastly realities.
Thus closed the 23d of November, 18—.
II.
“The house rests not on the earth, but on the wife.”—Servian Proverb.