Consternation! The pianist, however, not having heard the Countess’s surrender, went on playing, until the meek anonymous gentleman, whom Robledo had noticed trotting about, repairing the disorder caused by the guests, came up to him and grasped his hands. The music ceased, the couples stopped short, and finally, with a bored expression found chairs. The Countess began....
Staring, in an attempt to appear attentive, blinking, in an attempt to repel the advances of sleep, yawning, or sunk in blank immobility, her victims sat or lolled about. Two of the women, livelier than the rest, were feigning great interest in the recitation. One of them went so far as to put a hand behind her ear in order to hear better. A running conversation was going on, however, behind their fans, which they dropped to their laps now and then when they needed both hands for the patter of applause. But they caught them up quickly to conceal their laughter. The Countess was entertaining them so much better than she knew!
Robledo chanced to be standing behind them. Leaning against the door-jamb, he was half hidden by the hangings. The Countess meanwhile was declaiming with increasing fervor, so that, in order to carry on their conversation, the two women had to raise their voices.
“Instead of stuffing us with poetry, I wish she’d give us a decent supper,” one of them was saying.
The other protested. The Countess set a table that was dangerous, but certainly plentiful. Only the brave, not to say reckless, accepted her dinner invitations, for on these occasions the Countess herself prepared the courses. “And, my dear, by the time you reach dessert, you’re lucky if you only have to ’phone for the doctor, instead of the undertaker!”
Frequently interrupted by their own laughter, they rehearsed the Countess’s history. She had once been rich; some attributed this past wealth to her parents’ fortune, others to the fortunes—and fortunes—of her lovers. Her marriage with the Count Titonius had provided her with a title and the most insignificant of husbands, a fellow who, ruined by a stupid speculation, tossed up a coin to see whether he should blow out his brains or marry the Countess. And now, in her establishment, he occupied a position quite inferior to that of the servants. When the Countess’s nerves were in a state of tension because of the infidelity of some one of her youthful protégés, it was her habit to throw all the Count’s shirts and underwear over the banisters, after which with the air of an injured queen she would order him to leave her presence for ever.
A few days later, however, when the poetess was giving another party, the outcast would reappear, meek, and sad, and shrinking, as though fearful of occupying too much space in his wife’s rooms.
“I can’t imagine,” the other was saying, “why she persists in giving these receptions, when the woman is ruined! For instance, on the table out there where we’ll have supper in a little while, you’ll see large pastry pieces, and hot-house fruit—rented, my dear, rented for the evening, just like the servants. Everyone knows it, and no one dares take any of these show pieces, the Countess would be so furious—so all we’ll get will be tea and cakes, and we’ll have to pretend that’s all we want!”
They stopped a moment to applaud the Countess, who was emboldened by her apparent success, to begin declaiming a new poem.
Robledo, as little interested in the malicious gossipings of these two women as in his hostess’s recitations, took advantage of a moment during which the Countess was bowing to her audience, to leave the drawing-room and make his way to the alcove which had been the scene of his romantic passage with the poetess.