One morning, however, while passing in front of the cathedral, I saw her walking alone, and quickly seized the opportunity and overtook her.
“Ah! Mademoiselle!” I exclaimed in French as I raised my cap in feigned surprise and descended from the car. “Fancy, you! In Palermo! And Madame, your aunt?”
“She is quite well, thank you, Prince,” she replied; and then, at my invitation, she got into the car and we ran round the town. I saw that she was very uneasy. The meeting was not altogether a pleasant surprise for her; that was very evident.
“This place is more civilised than Tirnovo,” I laughed. “Since then I expect that you, like myself, have been travelling a good deal.”
“Yes. We’ve been about quite a lot—to Vienna, Abbazia, Rome, and now to Palermo.”
“And not yet to London?”
“Oh! yes. We were at home exactly eleven days. The weather was, however, so atrocious that Madame—my aunt, I mean—decided to come here. We are at the Excelsior. You are, of course, at the Igiea?”
And so we ran along through the big, rather ugly, town, laughing and chatting affably. Dressed in a neat gown of dove-grey cloth, with hat to match and long white gloves, she looked extremely chic, full of that daintiness which was so essentially that of the true Parisienne.
I told her nothing of my visit to Toddington Terrace, but presently I said:
“I’ll come to the Excelsior, and call on your aunt—if I may?”