“Captain Houghton, the British naval attaché at Rome. He is home for a month’s leave, and sent his compliments to you.”
“Oh, Freddie Houghton?” she exclaimed. “He was longing to get home all the winter, but couldn’t get leave. He’s engaged, they say, and of course he wanted to see his enchantress. He’s the best dancer in Rome.”
Then suddenly lowering his voice, he asked abruptly—
“Why is Borselli here? I had no idea he was to be a guest!”
“Ah! I know you don’t like the fellow,” she remarked, glancing back into the room. “Neither do I. He is my father’s evil genius, I believe.”
“What makes you suspect that?” inquired the Frenchman, with considerable interest.
“Several circumstances,” was her vague response, as she twisted her curious old snake bracelet, a genuine sixteenth-century ornament which she had bought one day in a shop on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
“You mistrust him—eh?”
“He poses as my father’s friend, but I believe that all the time he is jealous of his position and is his bitterest enemy.”
“But they are very old friends, are they not?”