A shadow seemed to fall on Count de Montevesso’s face for the moment. Clelia unclasped her fingers, shook her fists at the empty space, then clasped her legs again. These movements, full of sombre energy, were observed silently by the Count of Montevesso. He uttered the word “Patienza,” which in its humility is the word of the ambitious, of the unforgiving who keep a strict account with the world; a word of indomitable hope. “You wait till you are a little older. You will have plenty of people at your feet; and then you will be able to spurn anybody you like.”
“You mean when I am married,” said Clelia in a faraway voice and staring straight over her knees.
“Yes,” said the Count de Montevesso, “but you will first have to learn to be gentle.”
This recommendation apparently missed the ear for which it was destined. For a whole minute Clelia seemed to contemplate some sort of vision with her predatory and pathetic stare. One side of her nightgown had slipped off her shoulder. Suddenly she pushed her scattered hair back, and extending her arm towards Count Helion patted him caressingly on the cheek.
When she had done patting him he asked, unmoved: “Now, what is it you want?”
She was careful not to turn her face his way while she whispered: “I want that young signor that came today to make eyes at my aunt.”
“Impossible.”
“Why impossible? I was with them in the morning. They did nothing but look at each other. But I went for him myself.”
“That Englishman! You can’t have an Englishman like this. I am thinking of something better for you, a marquis or a count.”
This was the exact truth, not a sudden idea to meet a hopeless case.
“You have hardly had time to have a good look at him,” added Count Helion.
“I looked at him this evening with all my eyes, with all my soul. I would have sat up all night to look at him. But he got up and turned his back on me. He has no eyes for anybody but my aunt.”
“Did you speak together, you two?”
“Yes,” she said, “he sat down by me and all those witches stared as if he had been making up to a monster. Am I a monster? He too looked at me as if I had been one.”
“Was he rude to you?” asked the Count de Montevesso.
“He was as insolent as all the people I have seen since we came to this town. His heart was black as of all the rest of them. He was gentle to me as one is gentle to an old beggar for the sake of charity. Oh, how I hated him.”
“Well, then,” said Count de Montevesso in a harsh unsympathetic tone, “you may safely despise him.”
Clelia threw herself half out of bed on the neck of Count Helion, who preserved an unsympathetic rigidity though he did not actually repulse her wild and vehement caress.
“Oh, dearest uncle of mine,” she whispered ardently into his ear, “he is handsome! I must have him for myself.”
There was a knocking at the door. Count Helion tore the bare arms from his neck and pushed the girl back into bed.
“Cover yourself up,” he commanded hurriedly. He arranged the blanket at her back. “Lie still and say nothing of all this, and then you need have no fear. But if you breathe a word of this to anybody, then … Come in,” he shouted to the renewed knocking and had just time to shake his finger at Clelia menacingly before the Abbé and the doctor entered the room.
Part III
I
Cosmo walked away with no more than one look back, just before turning the corner, at the tensely alert griffins guarding the portals of the Palazzo. At the entrance of his inn a small knot of men on the pavement paused in their low conversation to look at him. After he had passed he heard a voice say, “This is the English milord.” He found the dimly lit hall empty and he went up the empty staircase into the upper regions of silence. His face, which to the men on the pavement had appeared passionless and pale as marble, looked at him suddenly out of the mirror over the fireplace, and he was startled as though he had seen a ghost.
Spire had been told not to wait for his return. His empty room had welcomed him with a bright flame on the hearth and with lighted candles. He turned away from his own image and stood with his back to the fire looking downwards and vaguely oppressed by the profound as if expectant silence around him. The strength and novelty of the impressions received during that day, the intimacy of their appeal, had affected his fortitude. He felt mortally weary and began to undress; but after he got into bed he remained for a time in a sitting posture. For the first time in his life he tasted of loneliness. His father was at least thirty-five years his senior. An age! His sister was just a young girl. Clever, of course. He was very fond of her, but the mere fact of her being a girl raised a wall between them. He had never made any real friends. He had nothing to do; and he did not seem to know what to think of anything in the world. Now, for instance there was that vanquished fat figure in a little cocked hat. … Still an emperor.
Cosmo came with a start out of a
