Yet she would tell him nothing—absolutely nothing. It was her secret, she said—a secret which she steadily declined to divulge.
“Why do you not take my advice and leave Rome?” she asked one night when she was dancing with him at a great ball at the Rospigliosi Palace. “You are in constant peril.”
“I have my duties here,” was his answer. “I cannot leave.”
She sighed, and as he held her in his arms he felt that she was trembling.
“Why won’t you heed me?” she implored, looking up at him with those wonderful eyes of hers. “Do.”
“Because I am not my own master,” was his reply. “Because I cannot.”
General Cataldi was there, in his fine uniform resplendent with stars and ribbons, and it chanced that at that moment his eyes fell upon the handsome pair.
He regarded them suspiciously, thoughtfully stroking his white moustache.
“That Englishman, Waldron, seems on very friendly terms with the Princess Luisa,” he remarked to the brilliant, handsomely dressed young woman at his side—the Countess Cioni.
“Yes,” was the answer of the lady in pink in the glittering tiara. “I, too, have noticed it. But Luisa is always making queer friendships.”