“Yes, of course,” she resumed. “But to sustain Italy’s prestige we are compelled to do such lots of entertaining. I’m terribly sick of it all. The situation in Rome began to change almost as soon as father was appointed here, and now it has become extremely grave and critical. The men who were once his friends are now his bitterest foes. He has adjusted several most difficult matters recently, but no single word of commendation has he received from the Marquis Montelupo.”
“Perhaps the Marquis is not his friend,” Gemma hazarded, for the purpose of ascertaining the extent of her knowledge.
“No. He is his enemy; of that I’m absolutely confident,” the girl replied. “I hate him. He’s never straightforward. Once, in Rome, he tried to worm from me a secret of my father’s, and because I would not speak he has never forgiven me.”
“Was it some very deep secret?” Gemma inquired. “Yes. It concerned the prestige of Italy and my father’s reputation for probity,” she replied. “Why the King trusts him so implicitly, I can never understand.”
“If there are serious political complications in Rome, as you seem to think, then the days of his power are numbered,” observed her visitor, now master of herself again. “The Ministry will be thrown out.”
“Ah! that would be the best thing that could happen to Italy,” she declared with a look of wisdom. “Montelupo is my father’s enemy; he seeks to fetter him in every action, in order that his reputation as a diplomat may be ruined, so that the King may be forced to send him his letters of recall. Truly the post of Ambassador in London is no sinecure.”
Gemma was silent. She hesitated and shuddered, Carmenilla noticed it, and asked her if she were cold.
“No, no,” she answered quickly. “It is quite warm and cosy here.” The light played on her smooth skin to admiration, and the colour changed in her excited face.
At luncheon, served with that stateliness which characterised the whole of the Ambassador’s household, they chatted on, as women will chat, of dress, of books, of plays, and of the latest gossip from Florence and Rome, the two centres of Italian society. They were eating their dessert, when the hall-porter entered bearing a card upon the salver. Carmenilla glanced at it, smiled, and rose to excuse herself.
“A visitor!” Gemma exclaimed. “Who is it?”