Yet she scarcely looked at the rich and costly things as they arrived in huge boxfuls, but ordered Teresa to put them aside, sighing within herself that the world was so soon to make merry over the great tragedy of her life.
Dubard was still at Bayonne, detained on business connected with his estate. He wrote frequently, and, much against her own inclination, she was compelled to reply to his letters. More than one person in her own set remarked upon the prolonged absence of the popular young Frenchman who had become so well known in the Eternal City, but only one person guessed the true reason—and that person was George Macbean.
Late one afternoon she had been driving on the Pincio, as was her habit each day. She was alone, her mother being too unwell to go out, and just as the passeggiata, or fashionable promenade, was over, she passed the young Englishman walking alone. She bowed and drove on, but presently stopped her victoria, alighted, and telling the coachman that she would walk home, dismissed him.
Most of the carriages had already left that beautiful hill-garden from the terraces of which one obtains such wonderful panoramas of the ancient city, and it being nearly six o’clock, the promenaders were now mostly Cookites, the women bloused and tweed-skirted, and the men in various costumes of England, from the inevitable blue serge suit to the breeches and golf-cap of “the seaside,”—people with whom she was unacquainted. In a few moments they met, and he turned happily and walked in her direction.
“I’m cramped,” she declared. “I’ve been in the carriage nearly three mortal hours, first paying calls with father, and then here alone. I saw you, so it was a good opportunity of getting a walk. You go to the Princess Palmieri’s to-night, I suppose?”
“Yes, Her Highness has sent me a card,” he answered—“thanks to your father, I suppose.” As she walked beside him, in a beautiful gown of pale dove grey with a large black hat, he glanced at her admiringly and added, “I saw in to-day’s Tribuna that the count is expected back in two or three days. Have you had news of him?”
“I received a letter yesterday—from Biarritz. He is with his aunt, who is very unwell, and is paying a dutiful visit before coming here.”
In silence they walked on, passing the water-clock and descending the hill until they came to that small piazza with the stone balustrade that affords such a magnificent vista of the ancient city. Here they halted to enjoy the view, as the tourists were enjoying it. The wonderful Eternal City with its hundred towers lay below them in the calm golden mist of evening. It was a scene she had looked upon hundreds of times, yet at that moment she was attracted by the crowd of “personally conducted” who stood at the stone balustrade and gazed away in the direction of where the huge dome of St. Peter’s loomed up through the haze. Like many a cosmopolitan, she took a mischievous delight in mingling with a crowd of English tourists and hearing their comments upon things Italian—remarks that were often drily humorous. She stood at her companion’s side, chatting with him while the light faded, the glorious afterglow died away, and the tourists, recollecting the hour of their respective tables d’hôte, descended the hill to the city. And then, when they were alone, he turned to her and, with a touch of bitterness in his voice, said—
“I suppose very soon you will leave Rome and live in Paris. Has the count made any plans?”
“We live this summer at the château,” was her answer. “The winter he intends to spend on the Riviera.”