'About Giorgio perhaps?' returned another lady laughing.

'So they say. The story began this summer at Lucerne--'

'But Laura was not at Lucerne,'

'Exactly--but her husband was--'

'I believe it is a pure invention,' broke in the Florentine countess Donna Bianca Dolcebuono--'Giorgio is in Paris now.'

Andrea heard it all in spite of the chattering of the little Contessa Starnina, who sat at his right hand, and never gave him a moment's peace. Bianca Dolcebuono's words did little to ease the smart of his wound. At least, he would have liked to know the whole story. But the d.u.c.h.ess Angelieri did not resume the thread of her discourse, and other conversations crossed and recrossed the table under the great gorgeous roses from the Villa Pamfili.

Who was this Giorgio? A former lover? Elena had spent part of the summer at Lucerne,--she had just come from Paris. After the sale she had refused to go to Laura Miano's. A fierce desire a.s.sailed him to see her, to speak to her again. The invitation at the Palazzo Farnese was for ten o'clock--half past ten found him there waiting anxiously.

He waited long. The rooms filled rapidly; the dancing began. In the Carracci gallery the divinities of fashionable Rome vied in beauty with the Ariadnes, the Galateas, the Auroras, the Dianas of the frescos; couples whirled past; heads glittering with jewels drooped or raised themselves, bosoms panted, the breath came fast through parted crimson lips.

'You are not dancing, Sperelli?' asked Gabriella Barbarisi, a girl brown as the _oliva speciosa_, as she pa.s.sed him on the arm of her partner, fanning herself and smiling to show a dimple she had at the corner of her mouth.

'Yes--later on,' Andrea responded hastily--'later on.'

Heedless of introductions or greetings, his torment increased with every moment of this fruitless expectation, and he roamed aimlessly from room to room. That 'perhaps' made him sadly afraid that Elena would not come.

And supposing she really did not? When was he likely to see her again?

Donna Bianca Dolcebuono pa.s.sed, and, almost without knowing why, he attached himself to her side, saying a thousand agreeable things to her, feeling some slight comfort in her society. He had the greatest desire to speak to her about Elena, to question her, to rea.s.sure himself; but the orchestra struck up a languorous mazurka and the Florentine countess was carried off by her partner.

Thereupon, Andrea joined a group of young men near one of the doors--Ludovico Barbarisi, the Duke di Beffi, Filippo del Gallo and Gino Bomminaco. They were watching the couples, and exchanging observations not over refined in quality. One of them turned to Andrea as he came up.

'Why, what has become of you this evening? Your cousin was looking for you a moment ago. There she is dancing with my brother now.'

'Look!' exclaimed Filippo del Gallo--'the Albonico has come back, she is dancing with Giannetto.'

'The d.u.c.h.ess of Scerni came back last week,' said Ludovico; 'what a lovely creature!'

'Is she here?'

'I have not seen her yet,'

Andrea's heart stopped beating for a moment, fearing that something would be said against her by one or other of these malicious tongues.

But the pa.s.sing of the Princess Isse on the arm of the Danish Minister diverted their attention. Nevertheless, his desire for further knowledge was so intense, that it almost drove him to lead back the conversation to the name of his lady-love. But he was not quite bold enough. The mazurka was over; the group broke up. 'She is not coming! She is not coming!' His secret anxiety rose to such a pitch that he half thought of leaving the place altogether; the contact of this laughing, careless throng was intolerable.

As he turned away, he saw the d.u.c.h.ess of Scerni entering the gallery on the arm of the French amba.s.sador. For one instant their eyes met, but that one glance seemed to draw them to each other, to penetrate to the very depths of their souls. Both knew that each had only been looking for the other, and at that moment there seemed to fall a silence upon both hearts, even in the midst of the babel of voices, and all their surroundings to vanish and be swept away by the force of their own absorbing thought.

She advanced along the frescoed gallery where the crowd was thinnest, her long white train rippling like a wave over the floor behind her. All white and simple, she pa.s.sed slowly along, turning from side to side in answer to the numerous greetings, with an air of manifest fatigue and a somewhat strained smile which drew down the corners of her mouth, while her eyes looked larger than ever under the low white brow, her extreme pallor imparting to her whole face a look so ethereal and delicate as to be almost ghostly. This was not the same woman who had sat beside him at the Ateleta's table, nor the one of the Sale Rooms, nor the one standing waiting for a moment on the pavement of the Via Sistina. Her beauty at this moment was of ideal n.o.bility, and shone with additional splendour among all these women heated with the dance, over-excited and restless in their manner. The men looked at her and grew thoughtful; no mind was so obtuse or empty that she did not exercise a disturbing influence upon it, inspire some vague and indefinable hope. He whose heart was free imagined with a thrill what such a woman's love would be; he who loved already conceived a vague regret, and dreamed of raptures. .h.i.therto unknown; he who bore a wound dealt by some woman's jealousy or faithlessness suddenly felt that he might easily recover.

Thus she advanced amid the homage of the men, enveloped by their gaze.

Arrived at the end of the gallery, she joined a group of ladies who were talking and fanning themselves excitedly under the fresco of Perseus turning Phineus to stone. They were the Princess di Ferentino, Hortensa Ma.s.sa d'Alba, the Marchesa Daddi-Tosinghi and Bianca Dolcebuono.

'Why so late?' asked the latter.

'I hesitated very much whether to come at all--I don't feel well.'

'Yes, you look very pale.'

'I believe I am going to have neuralgia badly again, like last year.'

'Heaven forefend!'

'Elena, do look at Madame de la Boissiere,' exclaimed Giovanella Daddi in her queer husky voice; 'doesn't she look like a camel with a yellow wig!'

'Mademoiselle Vanloo is losing her head over your cousin,' said Hortensa Ma.s.sa d'Alba to the Princess as Sophie Vanloo pa.s.sed on Ludovico Barbarisi's arm. 'I heard her say just now when they pa.s.sed me in the mazurka--_Ludovic, ne faites plus ca en dansant; je frissonne toute_--'

The ladies laughed in chorus, fluttering their fans. The first notes of a Hungarian waltz floated in from the next room. The gentlemen came to claim their partners. At last Andrea was able to offer Elena his arm and carry her off.

'I thought I should have died waiting for you! If you had not come I should have gone to find you--anywhere. When I saw you come in I could scarcely repress a cry. This is only the second evening I have met you, and yet I feel as if I had loved you for years. The thought of you and you alone is now the life of my life.'

He uttered his burning words of love in a low voice, looking straight before him, and she listened in a similar att.i.tude, apparently quite impa.s.sive, almost stony. Only a sprinkling of people remained in the gallery. Between the busts of the Caesars along the walls, lamps with milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light. The profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of a sumptuous conservatory. The music floated through the warm-scented air under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though an enchanted garden.

'Can you love me?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love me.'

'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.

'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.

'Perhaps----' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a loving hand. Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud and rushing like a sudden tempest.

'Shall we dance?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the prospect of encircling her with his arm.

She hesitated a moment before replying. 'No; I would rather not.'

Then, seeing the d.u.c.h.ess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with the Princess Alberoni and the French amba.s.sadress, she added hurriedly, 'Now--be prudent, and leave me.'

She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the ladies with a light firm step. Her long white train lent an additional grace to her figure, the wide and heavy folds of brocade serving to accentuate the slenderness of her waist. Andrea, as he followed her with his eyes, kept repeating her words to himself, 'I came for you alone--I came for you alone!' The orchestra suddenly took up the waltz measure with a fresh impetus. And never, through all his life, did he forget that music, nor the att.i.tude of the woman he loved, nor the sumptuous folds of the brocade trailing over the floor, nor the faintest shadow on the rich material, nor one single detail of that supreme moment.

CHAPTER V

Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily, without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the d.u.c.h.ess, and learned from him that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain and could see no one. On the Sat.u.r.day, towards five o'clock, he came back once more, still hoping for better luck.

He left his house on foot. The evening was chill and gray, and a heavy leaden twilight was settling over the city. The lamps were already lighted round the fountain in the Piazza Barberini like pale tapers round a funeral bier, and the Triton, whether being under repair or for some other reason, had ceased to spout water. Down the sloping roadway came a line of carts drawn by two or three horses harnessed in single file, and bands of workmen returning home from the new buildings. A group of these came swaying along arm in arm, singing a lewd song at the pitch of their voices.

Andrea stopped to let them pa.s.s. Two or three of the debased, weather-beaten faces impressed themselves on his memory. He noticed that a carter had his hand wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and that another, who was kneeling in his cart, had the livid complexion, deep sunken eyes and convulsively contracted mouth of a man who has been poisoned. The words of the song were mingled with guttural cries, the cracking of whips, the grinding of wheels, the jingling of horse bells and shrill discordant laughter.

His mental depression increased. He found himself in a very curious mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial impression conveyed to them by external means a.s.sumed the gravity of a wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding circ.u.mstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening, the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his heart, a foreboding of disaster.

A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.

'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope.