“Yes,” his master admitted. “He’s the most resourceful man I’ve ever known—and I’ve known a few. We’ll take a run up the Pincio and back,” and, without changing speed, he began to ascend the winding road which leads to the top of the hill.
Up there, they found quite a crowd of people whom Nassington had known the previous season.
Rome was full of life, merriment and gaiety. Carnival had passed, and the Pasqua was fast approaching; the time when the Roman season is at its gayest and when the hotels are full. The court receptions and balls at the Quirinale had brought the Italian aristocracy from the various cities, and the ambassadors were mostly at their posts because of the weekly diplomatic receptions.
Surely it is a strange world—that vain, silly, out-dressing world of Rome, where religion is only the cant of the popular confessor and the scandal of a promenade through St. Peter’s or San Giovanni.
At the summit of the Pincio Lord Nassington pulled up the car close to the long stone balustrade, and as he did so a young Italian elegant, the Marquis Carlo di Rimini, stepped up and seizing his hand, was profuse in his welcome back to Rome.
The Englishman descended from the car, lit one of his eternal “Petroffs,” and leaned upon the balustrade to chat and learn the latest scandal. The Marquis Carlo and he were fellow members of the Circolo Unione, one of the smartest clubs in Rome, and had played bridge together through many a night.
A whisper had once gone forth that the source of the over-dressed young noble’s income was cards, but Nassington had always given him his due. He had never caught him cheating, and surely if he had cheated the Englishman would have known it.
As they stood there, gazing across the city below, the sky was aflame in all the crimson glory of the Roman sunset, and even as they spoke the Angelus had, of a sudden, clashed forth from every church tower, the bells clanging discordantly far and near.
It was the hour of the venti-tre, but in the city nobody cared. The patient toilers in the Campagna, however, the contadini in the fields and in the vineyards who had been working on the brown earth since the dawn, crossed themselves with a murmured prayer to the Madonna and prodded their ox-teams onward. In Rome itself nowadays, alas! the bells of the venti-tre of spring and winter only remind the gay, giddy cosmopolitan crowd that it is the hour for tea in the halls of the hotels, or the English tea-rooms in the Corso.
An hour later, when his lordship entered his room at the Excelsior, he found the Reverend Thomas Clayton seated in his armchair patiently smoking and awaiting him.