Cecilia told her mother what Lamberti had advised her to do for Guido's
sake, and that she had sent her message by him. The Countess was
surprised and did not quite like the plan.
"Either you love him, or you do not, my dear," she said. "You were sure
that you did not, and you told him so. That was sensible, at least,
though I think you might have found out earlier what you felt. It is
much better to let him understand at once that you will not marry him.
Men would always rather know the truth at once and get over it than be
kept dangling at a capricious woman's beck and call."
Cecilia did not explain that Lamberti feared for his friend's life. In
broad daylight that looked dramatic, and her mother would not believe
it. She only said that she was sure she was acting for the best and that
the engagement was to stand a little longer, adding that she wished to
leave Rome, as it was very hot. In her heart she was hurt at being
called capricious, but was too penitent to deny the charge.
The Countess at once wrote a formal note to Princess Anatolie in which
she said that she had been hasty and spoken too soon, that her daughter
seemed undecided, and that nothing was to be said at present about
breaking the engagement. The marriage, she added, would be put off until
the autumn.
The Princess showed this communication to Monsieur Leroy when he came
in. He did not mean to tell her about his visit to the lawyer, for he
had made up his mind to play on her credulity as much as he could and to
attribute any advantage she might gain by his manoeuvres to
supernatural intervention. The Countess's letter surprised him very
much, and as he did not know what to do, it seemed easy to do nothing.
He expressed his disgust at Cecilia's vacillation.
"She is a flirt and her mother is a fool," he said, and the speech
seemed to him pithy and concise.
The old Princess raised her aristocratic eyebrows a little. She would
have expressed the same idea more delicately. There was a vulgar streak
in his character that often jarred on her, but she said nothing, for she
was inexplicably fond of him. For her own part, she was glad that
Cecilia had apparently changed her mind again.
Later in the day she received a few words from Guido, written in an
unsteady hand, to say that he was sorry he could not come and see her as
he had a bad attack of influenza. At the word she dropped the note as if
it burnt her fingers, and called Monsieur Leroy, for she believed that
influenza could be communicated in almost any way, and it was the only
disease she really feared: she had a presentiment that she was to die of
it.
"Take that thing away, Doudou!" she cried nervously. "Pick it up with
the tongs and burn it. He has the influenza! I am sure I have caught
it!"
Monsieur Leroy obeyed, while she retired to her own room to spend half
an hour in those various measures of disinfection which prophylactic
medicine has recently taught timid people. She had caused her maid to
telephone to Guido not to send any more notes until he was quite well.
"You must not go near him for a week, Doudou," she said when she came
back at last, feeling herself comparatively safe. "But you may ask how
he is by telephone every morning. I do not believe there can be any
danger in that."
Electricity was a mysterious power after all, and seemed infinitely
harder to understand than the ways of the supernatural beings with whom
Monsieur Leroy placed her in daily communication. She had heard a
celebrated man of science say that he himself was not quite sure what
electricity might or might not do since the discovery of the X-rays.
Her precautions had the effect of cutting off communication between her
and her nephew until her departure from Rome, which took place in the
course of a few days, considerably to the relief of the Countess, who
did not wish to meet her after what had passed.
Monsieur Leroy could not make up his mind to go and see the lawyer again
in order to stop any proceedings which the latter might be already
taking. Below his wish to serve the Princess and his hope of profiting
by his success, there lay his deep-rooted and unreasoning jealousy of
Guido d'Este, which he had never before seen any safe chance of
gratifying. It would be a profound satisfaction to see this man, who was
the mirror of honour, driven to extremities to escape disgrace. Another
element in his decision, if it could be called that, was the hopeless
disorder of his degenerate intelligence, which made it far easier for
him to allow anything he had done to bear fruit, to the last
consequence, than to make a second effort in order to arrest the growth
of evil.
The lawyer was at work, silently and skilfully, and in a few days
Princess Anatolie and Monsieur Leroy were comfortably established in her
place in Styria, where the air was delightfully cool.
What was left of society in Rome learned with a little surprise, but
without much regret, that the wedding was put off, and those who had
country places not far from the city, and had already gone out to them
for the summer, were delighted to know that they would not be expected
to come into town for the marriage during the great heat. No date had
ever been really fixed for it, and there was therefore no matter for
gossip or discussion. The only persons who knew that Cecilia had made an
attempt to break it off altogether were those most nearly concerned.
The Countess and Cecilia made preparations for going away, and the
dressmakers and other tradespeople breathed more freely when they were
told that they need not hurry themselves any longer.
But Cecilia had no intention of leaving without having seen Guido more
than once again, hard as it might be for her to face him. Lamberti had
written to her mother that he accepted Cecilia's decision gladly, and
hoped to be out of his room in a few days, but that he did not appear to
be recovering fast. He did not seem to be so strong as his friend had
thought, and the short illness, together with the mental shock of
Cecilia's letter, had made him very weak. The news of him was much the
same for three days, and the young girl grew anxious. She knew that
Lamberti spent most of his time with Guido, but he had not been to the
Palazzo Massimo since his interview with her. She wished she could see
him and ask questions, if only he could temporarily be turned into some
one else; but since that was impossible, she was glad that he did not
come to the house. She spent long hours in reading, while Petersen and
the servants made preparations for the journey, and she wrote a line to
Guido every day, to tell him how sorry she was for him. She received
grateful notes from him, so badly written that she could hardly read
them.
On the fourth day, no answer came, but Lamberti sent her mother a line
an hour later to say that Guido had more fever than usual and could not
write that morning, but was in no danger, as far as the doctor could
say.
"I should like to go and see him," Cecilia said. "He is very ill, and it
is my fault."
The Countess was horrified at the suggestion.
"My dear child," she cried, "you are quite mad! Why, the poor man is in
bed, of course!"
"I hope so," Cecilia answered unmoved. "But Signor Lamberti could carry
him to his sitting room."
"Who ever heard of such a thing!"
"We could go in a cab, with thick veils," Cecilia continued. "No one
would ever know."
"Think of Petersen, my dear! Women of our class do not wear thick veils
in the street. For heaven's sake put this absurd idea out of your head."
"It does not seem absurd to me."
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," retorted the Countess,
losing her temper. "You do not even mean to marry him, and yet you talk
of going to see him when he is ill, as if he were already your husband!"
"What if he dies?" Cecilia asked suddenly.
"There will be time enough to think about it then," answered the
Countess, with insufficient reflection. "Besides he is not going to die
of a touch of influenza."
"Signor Lamberti says he is very ill. Several people died of it last
winter, you know. I suppose you mean that I need not think of trying to
see him until we hear that there is no hope for him."
"Well?"
"That might be too late. He might not know me. It seems to me that it
would be better to try and save his life, or if he is not in real
danger, to help him to get well."
"If you insist upon it," said the Countess, "I will go and see him
myself and take a message from you. I suppose that nobody could find
anything serious to say against me for it, though, really--I am not so
old as that, am I?"
"I think every one would think it was very kind of you to go and see
him."
"Do you? Well--perhaps--I am not sure. I never did such a thing in my
life. I am sure I should feel most uncomfortable when I found myself in
a young man's rooms. We had better send him some jelly and beef-tea. A
bachelor can never get those things."
"It would not be the same as if I could see him," said Cecilia, mildly.
Her mother did not like to admit this proposition, and disappeared soon
afterward. Without telling her daughter, she wrote an urgent note to
Lamberti begging him to come and dine and tell them all about Guido's
illness, as she and Cecilia were very anxious about him.
Cecilia went out alone with Petersen late in the hot afternoon. She
wished she could have walked the length of Rome and back, but her
companion was not equal to any such effort in the heat, so the two got
into a cab. She did not like to drive with her maid in her own carriage,
simply because she had never done it. For the first time in her life she
wished she were a man, free to go alone where she pleased, and when she
pleased. She could be alone in the house, but nowhere out of doors,
unless she went to the villa, and she was determined not to go there
again before leaving Rome. It had disagreeable associations, since she
had been obliged to sit on the bench by the fountain with Guido a few
days ago. She remembered, too, that at the very moment when his paternal
warning not to catch cold had annoyed her, he had probably caught cold
himself, and she did not know why this lowered him a little in her
estimation, but it did. She was ashamed to think that such a trifle
might have helped to make her write the letter which had hurt him so
much.
She went to the Forum, for there she could make Petersen sit down, and
could walk about a little, and nobody would care, because she should
meet no one she knew.
As they went down the broad way inside the wicket at which the tickets
are sold, she saw a party of tourists on their way to the House of the
Vestals. Of late years both Germans and Americans have discovered that
Rome is not so hot in summer as the English all say it is, and that
fever does not lurk behind every wall to spring upon the defenceless
foreigner.
The tourists were of the usual class, and Cecilia was annoyed to find
them where she had hoped to be alone; but they would soon go away, and
she sat down with Petersen to wait for their going, under the shadow of
the temple of Castor and Pollux. Petersen began to read her guide-book,
and the young girl fell to thinking while she pushed a little stone from
side to side with the point of her parasol, trying to bring it each time
to the exact spot on which it had lain before.
She was thinking of all that had happened to her since she left Petersen
in that same place on the May morning that seemed left behind in another
existence, and she was wondering whether she would go back to that
point, if she could, and live the months over again; or whether, if the
return were possible, she would have made the rest different from what
it had been.
It would have been so much easier to go on loving the man in the dream
to the end of her life, meeting him again and again in the old
surroundings that were more familiar to her than those in which she
lived. It would have been so much better to be always her fancied self,
to be the faithful Vestal, leading the man she loved by sure degrees to
heights of immaterial blessedness in that cool outer firmament where
sight and hearing and feeling, and thinking and loving, were all merged
in a universal consciousness. It would have been so much easier not to
love a real man, above all not to love one who never could love her,
come what might. And besides, if all that had gone on, she would never
have brought disappointment and suffering upon Guido d'Este.
She decided that it would have been preferable, by far, to have gone on
with her life of dreams, and when awake to have been as she had always
known herself, in love with everything that made her think and with
nothing that made her feel.
But in the very moment when the matter seemed decided, she remembered
how she had looked into Lamberti's eyes three nights ago, and had felt
something more delicious than all thinking while she told him how she
loved that other man, who was himself. That one moment had seemed worth
an age of dreams and a lifetime of visions, and for it she knew that she
would give them all, again and again.
The point of the parasol did not move now, but lay against the little
stone, just where she was looking, for she was no longer weighing
anything in her mind nor answering reasons with reasons. With the
realisation of fact, came quickly the infinite regret and longing she
knew so well, yet which always consoled her a little. She had a right to
love as she did, since she was to suffer by it all her life. If she had
thrown over Guido d'Este to marry Lamberti, there would have been
something guilty in loving him. But there was not. She was perfectly
disinterested, absolutely without one thought for her own happiness, and
if she had done wrong she had done it unconsciously and was going to pay
the penalty with the fullest consciousness of its keenness.
The tourists trooped back, grinding the path with their heavy shoes,
hot, dusty, tired, and persevering, as all good tourists are. They
stared at her when they thought she was not watching them, for they were
simple and discreet souls, bent on improving themselves, and though they
despised her a little for not toiling like themselves, they saw that she
was beautiful and cool and quiet, sitting there in the shade, in her
light summer frock, and her white gloves, and her Paris hat, and the men
admired her as a superior being, who might be an angel or a demon, while
all the women envied her to the verge of hatred; and because she was
accompanied by such an evidently respectable person as Peterson was,
they could not even say that she was probably an actress. This
distressed them very much.
Kant says somewhere that when a man turns from argument and appeals to
mankind's common sense, it is a sure sign that his reasoning is
worthless. Similarly, when women can find nothing reasonable to say
against a fellow-woman who is pretty and well dressed, they generally
say that she looks like an actress; and this means according to the
customs of a hundred years ago, which women seem to remember though most
men have forgotten them, that she is an excommunicated person not fit to
be buried like a Christian. Really, they could hardly say more in a
single word.
When the tourists were at a safe distance Cecilia rose, bidding Petersen
sit still, and she went slowly on towards the House of the Vestals, and
up the little inclined wooden bridge which at that time led up to it,
till she stood within the court, her hand resting almost on the very
spot where it had been when Lamberti had come upon her in the spring
morning.
Her memories rose and her thoughts flashed back with them through ages,
giving the ruined house its early beauty again, out of her own youth.
She was not dreaming now, but she knew instinctively how it had been in
those last days of the Vestals' existence, and wished every pillar, and
angle, and cornice, and ornament back, each into its own place and
unchanged, and herself, where she was, in full consciousness of life and
thought, at the very moment when she had first seen the man's face and
had understood that one may vow away the dying body but not the
deathless soul. That had been the beginning of her being alive. Before
that, she had been as a flower, growing by the universal will, one of
those things that are created pure and beautiful and fragrant from the
first without thought or merit of their own; and then, as a young bird
in the nest, high in air, in a deep forest, in early summer, looking out
and wondering, but not knowing yet, its little heart beating fast with
only one instinct, to be out and alone on the wing. But afterwards all
had changed instantly and knowledge had come without learning, because
what was to make it was already present in subtle elements that needed
only the first breath of understanding to unite themselves in an ordered
and perfect meaning; as the electric spark, striking through invisible
mingled gases, makes perfect union of them in crystal drops of water.
That had been the beginning, since conscious life begins in the very
instant when the soul is first knowingly answerable for the whole
being's actions, in the light of good and evil, and first asks the only
three questions which human reason has never wholly answered, which are
as to knowledge, and duty, and hope.
Who shall say that life, in that sense, may not begin in a dream, as
well as in what we call reality? What is a dream? Sometimes a wandering
through a maze of absurdities, in which we feel as madmen must,
believing ourselves to be other beings than ourselves, conceiving the
laws of nature to be reversed for our advantage or our ruin, seeing
right as wrong and wrong as right, in the pathetic innocence of the
idiot or the senseless rage of the maniac, convinced beyond all argument
that the absolutely impossible is happening before our eyes, yet never
in the least astonished by any wonders, though subject to terrors we
never feel when we are awake. Has no one ever understood that confused
dreaming must be exactly like the mental state of the insane, and that
if we dreamed such dreams with open eyes, we should be raving mad, or
hopelessly idiotic? It is true, whether any one has ever said so or not.
Inanimate things turn into living creatures, the chair we sit on becomes
a horse, the arm-chair is turned into a wild beast; and we ride
a-hunting through endless drawing-rooms which are full of trees and
undergrowth, till the trees are suddenly people and are all dancing and
laughing at us, because we have come to the ball in attire so
exceedingly scanty that we wonder how the servants could have let us in.
And in the midst of all this, when we are frantically searching for our
clothes, and for a railway ticket, which we are sure is in the
right-hand pocket of the waistcoat, if only we could find it, and if
some one would tell us from which side of the station the train starts,
and we wish we had not forgotten to eat something, and had not unpacked
all our luggage and scattered everything about the railway refreshment
room, and that some kind person would tell us where our money is, and
that another would take a few of the fifty things we are trying to hold
in our hands without dropping any of them; in the midst of all this, I
say, a dead man we knew comes from his grave and stares at us, and asks
why we cruelly let him die, long ago, without saying that one word which
would have meant joy or despair to him at the last moment. Then our hair
stands up and our teeth chatter, because the secret of the soul has
risen against us where we least expected it; and we wake alone in the
dark with the memory of the dead.
Is not that madness? What else can madness be but that disjointing of
ordered facts into dim and disorderly fiction, pierced here and there by
lingering lights of memory and reason? All of us sometimes go mad in our
sleep. But it does not follow that in dreaming we are not sometimes
sane, rational, responsible, our own selves, good or bad, doing and
saying things which we might say and do in real life, but which we have
never said nor done, incurring the consequences of our words and deeds
as if they were actual, keeping good faith or breaking it, according to
our own natures, accomplishing by effort, or failing through indolence,
as the case may be, blushing with genuine shame, laughing with genuine
mirth, and burning with genuine anger; and all this may go on from the
beginning to the end of the dream, without a single moment of
impossibility, without one incident which would surprise us in the
waking state. With most people dreams of this kind are rare, but every
one who dreams at all must have had them once or twice in life.
If we are therefore sometimes sane in dreams we can remember, and act in
them as we really should, according to our individual consciences and
possessed of our usual intelligence and knowledge, it cannot be denied
that a series of such imaginary actions constitutes a real experience,
during which we have risen or fallen, according as we have thought or
acted. Some dreams of this kind leave impressions as lasting as that
made by any reality. The merit or fault is wholly fictitious, no doubt,
because although we have fancied that we could exercise our free will,
we were powerless to use it; but the experience gained is not imaginary,
where the dream has been strictly sane, any more than thought, in the
abstract, is fictitious because it is not action. People of some
imagination can easily, while wide awake, imagine a series of actions
and decide rationally what course they would pursue in each, and such
decisions constitute undoubted experience, which may materially affect
the conduct of the individual if cases similar to the fancied ones
present themselves in life. When there is no time to be lost, the
instantaneous recollection of a train of reasoning may often mean
instant decision, followed by immediate action, upon which the most
important consequences may follow.
Will any one venture to maintain that the vivid impressions left by
rational dreams do not act in the same way upon the mind, and through
the mind upon the will, and by the will upon our actions? And if we
could direct our dreams as we pleased, so that they should be always
rational, as some persons believe that we can, should we not be
continually gaining experience of ourselves while sleeping, as well as
when awake? Moreover, it is certain that there are men and women who are
particularly endowed with the faculty of dreaming, and who can very
often dream of any subject they please.
Since this digression is already so long, let one more thing be said,
which has not been said before, so far as the writer can find out. Our
waking memory is defective; with most men it is so to a lamentable
degree. It often happens that people forget that they have read a story,
for instance, and begin to read it again, and do not discover that they
have already done so till they have turned over many pages. It happens
constantly that the taste of something we eat, or the odour of something
we smell, recalls a scene we cannot remember at first, but which
sometimes comes back after a little while. Almost every one has felt now
and then that a fragment of present conversation is not new to him, and
that he has performed certain actions already, though he cannot remember
when. With some people these broken recollections are so frequent and
vivid as to lead to all sorts of theories to explain them, such as the
possibility of former existences on earth, or the more materialistic
probability that memories are transmitted from parents and ancestors
from the direct ascending lines.
One theory has been neglected. At such times we may be remembering
vaguely, or even with some distinctness, parts of dreams of which we had
no recollection on waking, but which, nevertheless, made their
impressions on the brain that produced them, while we were asleep.
Unconscious ratiocination is certainly not a myth; and if, by it, we can
produce our own forgotten actions, and even find objects we have lost,
by doing over again exactly what we were doing when the thing we seek
was last in our hands, sure that the rest of the action will repeat
itself spontaneously, we should not be going much farther if we repeated
both actions and words unconsciously remembered out of dreams. Much that
seems very mysterious in our sensations may be explained in that way,
and the explanation has the advantage of being simpler than that
afforded by the theory of atavism, and more orthodox than that offered
by the believers in the transmigration of souls.
Cecilia Palladio had no need of it, for she did not forget the one dream
that pleased her best, and she was never puzzled by uncertain
recollections of any other. Her life had begun in it, and had turned
upon it always, and after she had parted with it by an act of will, she
had retained the fullest remembrance of its details.
She left the place where she had paused near the entrance, and slowly
walked up the long court, by the dry excavated basins; she ascended the
low steps to the raised floor beyond, and stood still before the door of
her own room, the second on the left. She had meant to go in and look at
it quietly, but since she had taken refuge there when she ran away from
Lamberti, iron gates had been placed at the entrances of all the six
rooms, and they were locked. In hers a quantity of fragments of
sculptured marble and broken earthen vessels were laid side by side on
the floor, or were standing against the walls and in the corners.
She felt as if she had been shut out by an act of tyranny, just as when
she and her five companions had sadly left the House, obedient to the
Christian Emperor's decree, long ago. It had always been her room ever
since she had first dreamt. The beautiful narrow bronze bedstead used to
stand on the left, the carved oak wardrobe inlaid with ivory was on the
right, the marble table was just under the window, covered with objects
she needed for her toilet, exquisite things of chiselled silver and of
polished ivory. The chair, rounded at the back and with cushioned seat,
like Agrippina's, was near it. In winter, the large bronze brazier of
coals, changed twice daily, was always placed in the middle of the room.
The walls were wainscoted with Asian marble, and painted above that with
portraits in fresco of great and ancient Vestals who had been holier
than the rest, each in her snowy robes, with the white veil drawn up and
backwards over her head, and brought forward again over the shoulder,
and each holding some sacred vessel or instrument in her one uncovered
hand. There were stories about each which the Virgo Maxima used to read
to the younger ones from a great rolled manuscript, that was kept in an
ancient bronze box, or which she sometimes told in the moonlight on
summer nights when the maidens sat together in the court.
She closed her eyes, her forehead resting against the iron bars, and she
saw it all as it had been; she looked again and the desolation hurt her
and shocked her as when in a wilderness an explorer comes suddenly upon
the bleached bones of one who had gone before him and had been his
friend. She sighed and turned away.
The dream was better than the reality, in that and in many other ways.
She was overcome by the sense of utter failure, as she sat down on the
steps below the raised floor, lonely and forlorn.
It was all a comedy now, a miserable petty play to hide a great truth
from herself and others. She had begun her part already, writing her
wretched little notes to poor Guido. She knew that, ill as he was, the
words that seemed lies to her were ten times true to him, and that he
exaggerated every enquiry after his condition and each expression of
hope for his recovery into signs of loving solicitude, that he had
already forgiven what he thought her caprice, and was looking forward to
his marriage as more certain than ever, in spite of her message. It was
all a vile trick meant to save his feelings and help him to get well,
and she hated and despised it.
She was playing a part with Lamberti, too, and that was no better. She
had fallen low enough to love a man who did not care a straw for her,
and it needed all the energy of character she had left to keep him from
finding it out. Nothing could be more contemptible. If any one but he
had told her that she ought to go back to the appearance of an
engagement with Guido, she would have refused to do it. But Lamberti
dominated her; he had only to say, "Do this," and she did it, "Say
this," and she said it, whether it were true or not. She complained
bitterly in her heart that if he had bidden her lie to her mother, she
would have lied, because she had no will of her own when she was with
him.
And this was the end of her inspired visions, of her lofty ideals, of
her magnificent rules of life, of her studies of philosophy, her
meditations upon religion, and her dream of the last Vestal. She was
nothing but a weak girl, under the orders of a man she loved against her
will, and ready to do things she despised whenever he chose to give his
orders. He cared for no human being except his one friend. He was not to
be blamed for that, of course, but he was utterly indifferent to every
one else where his friend was concerned; every one must lie, or steal,
or do murder, if that could help Guido to get well. She was only one of
his instruments, and he probably had others. She was sure that half the
women in Rome loved Lamberto Lamberti without daring to say so. It was a
satisfaction to have heard from every one that he cared for none of
them. People spoke of him as a woman-hater, and one woman had said that
he had married a negress in Africa, and was the father of black savages
with red hair. That accounted for his going to Somali Land, she said,
and for his knowing so much about the habits of the people there.
Cecilia would have gladly killed the lady with a hat pin.
She was very unhappy, sitting alone on the steps after the sun had sunk
out of sight. The comedy was all to begin over again in an hour, for she
must go home and defend her conduct when her mother reproached her with
not acting fairly, and laughed at the idea that Guido was in danger of
his life. To-morrow she would have to write the daily note to him, she
would be obliged to compose affectionate phrases which would have come
quite naturally if she could have treated him merely as her best friend;
and he would translate affection to mean love, and another lie would
have been told. There was this, at least, about Guido, that he could not
order her about as Lamberti could. There was no authority in his eyes,
not even when he told her not to catch cold. Perhaps in all the time she
had known him, she had liked him best when he had been angry, at the
garden party, and had demanded to know her secret. But she would not
acknowledge that. If the situation had been reversed and Lamberti,
instead of Guido, had insisted on knowing what she meant to hide, she
could not have helped telling him. It was an abominable state of things,
but there was nothing to be done, and that was the worst part of it.
Lamberti knew Guido much better than she did, and if Lamberti told her
gravely that Guido might do something desperate if she broke with him,
she was obliged to believe it and to act accordingly. There might not be
one chance in a thousand, but the one-thousandth chance was just the one
that might have its turn. One might disregard it for oneself, but one
had no right to overlook it where another's life was concerned. At all
events she must wait till Guido was quite well again, for a man in a
fever really might do anything rash. Why did Lamberti not take away the
revolver that always lay ready in the drawer? It would be much safer,
though Guido probably had plenty of other weapons that would serve the
purpose. Guido was just the kind of pacific man who would have a whole
armoury of guns and pistols, as if he were always expecting to kill
something or somebody. She was sure that Lamberti, who had killed men
with his own hand, did not keep any sort of weapon in his room. If he
had a revolver of his own, it was probably carefully cleaned, greased,
wrapped up and put away with the things he used when he was sent on
expeditions. It was a thousand pities that Guido was not exactly like
Lamberti!
Cecilia rose at last, weary of thinking about it all, disgusted with her
own weakness, and decidedly ill-disposed towards her fellow-creatures.
The slightly flattened upper lip was compressed rather tightly against
the fuller lower one as she went back to find Petersen, and as she held
her head very high, her lids drooped somewhat scornfully over her eyes.
No one can ever be as supercilious as some people look when they are
angry with themselves and are thinking what miserable creatures they
really are.
It was late when Cecilia reached the Palazzo Massimo and went in on foot
under the dark carriageway after Petersen had paid the cab under the
watchful gaze of the big liveried porter. The Countess was already
dressing for dinner, and Cecilia went to her own room at once. The
consequence was that she did not know of her mother's invitation to
Lamberti, until she came into the drawing-room and saw the two together,
waiting for her.
"Did I forget to tell you that Signor Lamberti was coming to dinner?"
asked her mother.
"There was no particular reason why you should have told me," she
answered indifferently, as she held out her hand to Lamberti. "It is not
exactly a dinner party! How is he?" she asked, speaking to him.
"He is better this evening, thank you."
Why should he say "thank you," as if Guido were his brother or his
father? She resented it. Surely there was no need for continually
accentuating the fact that Guido was the only person living for whom he
had the slightest natural affection! This was perhaps exaggerated, but
she was glad of it, just then.
She, who would have given all for him, wished savagely that some woman
would make him fall in love and treat him with merciless barbarity.