She was full of the latest titbit of scandal concerning a young and pretty French Baronne, well-known in Roman Society, and her good-looking chauffeur. It was being whispered that the lady had gone away on a motor tour with him a fortnight ago and had not returned, while the irate husband was searching frantically for the driver with a revolver.
“They were last seen in Brescia,” the Marchesa said. “Probably they are on their way back to France. I hear, too, that the Baronne, though always supposed to be of the haut monde, was, before her marriage, a variety artiste at Olympia in Paris. And”—she lowered her voice behind her fan—“and there are all sorts of queer stories going about.”
Waldron was bored. The scandals of Rome—and, alas! Florence and the Eternal City are the two most scandal-mongering centres in the whole of Europe—were frequent. There seemed to be a fresh one daily, and nobody’s reputation was sacred from the venomous tongues of the old women, of whom the Marchesa Genazzano was one.
Her Majesty had done all she could to put a stop to such gossip at Court, but, alas! only six months before, one of her own ladies-in-waiting, a pretty woman moving in the best Society, had kept a secret tryst at an obscure restaurant down near the Tiber and had been shot dead by her lover, a common soldier.
After that unfortunate scandal in her own entourage Her Majesty had been powerless to prevent uncharitable chatter concerning others.
That night the whole of the great Quirinale Palace was ablaze with light. Music and gaiety were everywhere, for through the great suite of rooms the Sala of the Ambassadors, the Sala Regia, and the others, supper was being served with all that pomp and ceremony characteristic of the Italian Court.
Presently Hubert managed to escape the old lady, and offering his arm to a young, dark-haired girl, the daughter of the Minister of the Interior, made his way across the ballroom.
There was another waltz, and this he danced with his pretty little companion, afterwards taking her back to her mother, a rather obese, Hebrew-looking woman with more than a suspicion of dark hair upon her upper lip.
He had bowed and withdrawn when, passing through the crowd, he suddenly heard a low female voice utter his name, and saw at his side the Princess Luisa.
“I must see you,” she whispered, as he halted and bowed. “Go to the small door of the Capella Paolina. I will meet you outside it in five minutes.”