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The young girl led the way to her mother's table in the next room, and Lamberti sat down before it, while she pulled out a sheet of paper and gave him a pen. Neither looked at the other, and Lamberti wrote slowly in a laboured round hand unlike his own, intended for the telegraph clerk to read easily. "How shall I sign it?" he asked when he had finished. "'Countess Fortiguerra."
"I believe you, and I understand," she answered. "But how it sounds! If you had known that you were to sit next to me, nothing would have induced you to come!" From her place next the master of the house, the Countess Fortiguerra looked at them, and was pleased to see that they were already on good terms. "Thank you," Cecilia added in a quiet voice, and gravely.
Perhaps nothing could have caused greater surprise to Lamberti himself. On the other hand, Guido d'Este would have been glad, but not surprised. He rarely was. In the course of the day he left a card at the Palazzo Massimo for the Countess Fortiguerra, and as he turned away he regretted that he could not ask for her, and see her, and possibly see her daughter also.
Two years after Palladio's death her mother had married Count Fortiguerra, who had begun life in the army, then passed to diplomacy, had risen rapidly to the post of ambassador, and had died suddenly at Madrid when barely fifty years old, and when Cecilia was sixteen.
Petersen, or Madame Petersen, according to circumstances, by the servants of different nationalities who were successively in the employment of the Countess Fortiguerra, for she was a superior woman and the widow of a paymaster in the Bavarian army, and so eminently respectable and well educated that she had more than once been taken for Cecilia's governess.
"You know Cecilia already," said the Countess Fortiguerra, pleasantly. "I hope the rest of your family are coming?" "I think they are all coming," Lamberti answered very mechanically. He had resolutely looked at the Countess until now, but he felt the daughter's eyes upon him, and he was obliged to meet them, if only for a single instant.
The Countess Fortiguerra was pleasantly aware that every man under seventy turned to look after her daughter, from the smart old colonel of cavalry in his perfect uniform to the ragged and haggard waifs who sold wax matches at the corners of the streets.
As he took his hat and gloves, his eye fell on a note which he had not seen when he had come in. He opened it carelessly and found the same formal invitation which Guido had received at the same time. The Countess Fortiguerra requested the pleasure of his company at the Villa Palladio between four and six, and the date was just a fortnight ahead.
Old Fortiguerra had taught her that it was not really more natural for a woman to cry than it is for a man; and she had overcome even the very slight tendency she had ever had towards such outward weakness. But like other people who train themselves to keep down emotion, she suffered much more than if she had given way to what she felt.
"I was out when your note came. But I should have come in any case." "You know the Countess Fortiguerra, of course," said the Princess. "Certainly," answered Guido, who had not recognised the lady at all, and was glad to be told who she was, and that he knew her. Lamberti watched him closely, for he understood every shade of his friend's expression and manner.
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