beg your pardon for what I said. I am sorry. Please forgive me.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘I can forgive that, for you did not mean it.’
She looked behind her, for she had been expecting Oderisio to come back at any moment. The booth was so small that she could lift the curtain without leaving the counter. She looked under it and saw that Oderisio was gone, and she guessed that he knew something and had seen Castiglione coming; instead of being grateful to him for leaving her, she at first resented his going away and bit her lip; for she was a very womanly woman, and every woman is annoyed that any man should know any secret of hers which she has not told him. But later, when she was thinking over what had happened, she felt that Oderisio had done what a gentleman should, according to his lights; for he must have known that the two had not seen each other for years, and that such a meeting could hardly take place without some show of feeling on one side or the other.
Castiglione thanked her gently for her answer, and was going to say more, but she interrupted him, and suddenly began to busy herself with a lemon and a glass.
‘I am making you a lemonade,’ she said in a low voice. ‘There are some people we know coming to the booth. Do not turn round to look.’
The new-comers were two rather young women and a man who was not the husband of either. Castiglione knew them too, as Maria was well aware, and she would not have let them find him there, talking to her, without so much as a lemonade for an excuse.
But the necessity for the small artifice, the low tone in which she had been obliged to speak, and, above all, the close connection of that necessity with the past, had slightly changed the situation.
‘I shall go to your house to-morrow at three o’clock,’ said Castiglione in a tone which the approaching party could not possibly have heard. ‘Not much sugar, if you please,’ he added very audibly and without pausing a second.
Again she bit her lip a little, and she drew a short breath which he heard, and she shook her head, but it was impossible to answer him otherwise, for the three new-comers were close to the booth, and a moment later they were greeting her and Castiglione. The man was one of the now numerous Saracinesca tribe, a married son of the gigantic old Marchese di San Giacinto, who was still alive, and who had married Flavia Montevarchi nearly forty years earlier. His companions were the Marchesa di Parenzo, the Roman wife of a gentleman of Bologna, and Donna Teresa Crescenzi, whose wild husband had been killed in a motor-car accident at last, and who was supposed to be looking for another. The Marchesa di Parenzo was Maria Montalto’s most faithful friend, and Donna Teresa was one of the most accomplished gossips in Rome.
An accomplished gossip is one who tells stories which sound as if they might be true. This kind is very dangerous.
Neither of these two ladies knew all the truth about Maria and Castiglione; the difference between them was that the Marchesa never talked of the story, whereas Donna Teresa had concocted a tale which she repeated at intervals in the course of years, with constantly increasing precision of detail and dramatic sequence, till society had almost accepted it as an accurate account of what had taken place.
In actual fact there was not a word of truth in it, except that Maria and Castiglione had loved each other dearly. Donna Teresa was a tolerably good-natured woman on the whole, however, and her story gave Maria credit for the most splendid self-sacrifice and the most saintly life; it represented Baldassare del Castiglione as a hero worthy of his knightly ancestor and a perfect Galahad, so far as Maria was concerned; and it threw every particle of the blame on Montalto, who had left his wife to go and live in Spain, and was therefore permanently enrolled amongst those absent friends whose healths are drunk at family gatherings with a secret prayer that they may remain absent for ever, and whose characters may be torn to rags and tatters with perfect safety.
Donna Teresa had reached the point of believing her own story. She said she had been present at almost every crisis in the two years’ drama which had so completely separated three people that they apparently meant never to set eyes on one another again; she had consoled the lovers, she had inspired them with courage to sacrifice themselves, and had metaphorically dried their scalding tears; and she had spoken her mind to that monster of brutality, the Count of Montalto. In fact, she had contributed to his determination to go away for ever and to leave his poor young wife to bring up his son in peace.
Maria knew Donna Teresa’s story well, for her friend Giuliana Parenzo had told it to her; and as Maria was in no way called upon to make a public denial of it, she simply said nothing and was grateful to the gossip for treating her so kindly. Giuliana was not curious, and if she rightly guessed some part of the secret which her friend had never told her, she would not for worlds have asked her a question.
The three new-comers were all in the best possible humour, and the ladies wore perfectly new spring frocks of the very becoming model that was in fashion that spring; the one was of the palest grey and the other of the softest dove-colour. Giuliana was a dark woman with a quiet face; Teresa Crescenzi was very fair, fairer, perhaps, than all probability, and when she was excited she screamed.
‘Dear Maria!’ she cried in a high key, after the first words of greeting. ‘You are quite adorable in that costume! The Princess Campodonico was saying just now that it is a real pleasure to see you in colours at last. Maria has worn nothing but black and grey for seven years,’ added the lively lady, turning to Castiglione.
‘We all are dying of thirst,’ said Giuliana, seeing the look of annoyance in her friend’s face. ‘We all want lemonade, and we all want it at once. Won’t you let me come inside and help you?’
‘No, dear,’ answered Maria with a grateful look. ‘I really do not need help, and you do not look at all like a Neapolitan Acquaiola in that frock! Besides, Oderisio Boccapaduli is supposed to be my adjutant, but he has gone off to smoke a cigarette.’
She was very busy, and Donna Teresa turned to Castiglione.
‘And where in the world have you been since I met you in Florence last year?’ she asked. ‘I thought your regiment was coming to Rome at the beginning of the winter. I am sure you told me so.’
‘You are quite right. My old regiment came to Rome before Christmas, but I had already exchanged into another.’
In spite of herself Maria glanced at Castiglione as he spoke, but he was not looking at her, nor even at Donna Teresa. From the place where the booth was situated he could see a certain clump of ilex-trees that grow near what has always been called the Piazza di Siena, I know not why. Maria saw that his eyes were fixed on that point, and she shivered a little, as if she felt cold.
‘Why did you exchange?’ Donna Teresa asked, with the shameless directness of a thoroughly inquisitive woman. ‘Did you quarrel with your colonel, or fight a duel with a brother officer?’
Castiglione smiled and looked at her.
‘Oh, no! Nothing so serious! It was only because I was sure that you no longer loved me, dear Teresa!’
The younger generation of Romans, who have grown up more gregariously than their parents did, very generally call each other by their first names. Even Giuliana laughed at Castiglione’s answer, and Maria herself smiled quite naturally. Five minutes earlier she would not have believed that anything could make her smile while he stood there, and she was displeased with herself for being amused. It was as if she had yielded a little where she meant never to yield again.
Donna Teresa herself laughed louder than Giuliana.
‘The
