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Matters at last came to a crisis. Giovanni was about to leave the palace one morning a day or two after the Masco dinner, when a neatly dressed woman passed him on the grand stairway. She was wearing a thick veil, but he had an eye for outline and he knew that there was only one woman in Rome with just that half-floating lightness of movement. At once he blocked her way.
"What an old bear I must seem to you " His sentence broke off as the Countess Masco interrupted them. "Come along, John you'll play, won't you? We are waiting!" Count Rosso had already deserted Zoya for the green table. "Do you need me?" Derby asked. "Of course we do! The more the jollier; it is dreadfully dull without a lot."
For a moment she hesitated, on the verge of extricating herself or encouraging him to enter the circle despite the general disturbance it must cause. But the moment passed. His lips framed "Good-by" and hers answered, both smiled brightly and that was the parting. As Derby descended the stairs he encountered the Countess Masco.
Derby arose and was about to leave when the duke stopped him. Masco sat down to talk with Zoya, and Scorpa spoke to Derby in an undertone. "I hear you are going to Sicily to-morrow?" "Yes, I leave early in the morning." "Take my advice" his glance was sinister "and stay away." Derby smiled frankly. "May I ask why?" "Because your process will not work."
One might put it in three words: One must work!" Zoya shook her head she did it charmingly. "No, no," she said softly; "you are altogether wrong though I also can put it in three words. Life lies in this: One must love. That's all there is!" The conversation ended there, for the Duke Scorpa and Count Masco came up to speak to the contessa.
The Masco apartment was all brand-new so new that there was still about it an odor of fresh paint and plaster, and the pungency of raw textiles.
But the Contessa Masco, taking her cognac at a swallow, glanced at Tornik with a laugh. "Oh, lord, no! Nothing so dull, I hope, in this house!" Derby joined Nina, and she looked up at him with pride. "I am glad you are here to-night; I seem to be especially glad " She broke off, but her intonation conveyed unspoken thoughts. Derby's eyes kindled. "Why especially?
Things perfectly pardonable for them would finish you. You need only take your aunt and Kate Masco for your examples. Kate's behavior is not any worse than that of plenty of the born countesses, even. But that's just it she isn't a countess born, and her ways won't do! Your aunt, on the other hand, is 'grande dame' in every fiber of her being.
The young man traversed the rooms with perfect ease and unconsciousness this peasant boy who four years previously had run ragged and barefooted, begging for soldos from the tourists who were driving out to Torre Sansevero! From one of the doorways Sansevero watched them. "Per Dio, she is wonderful, my Leonora!" he exclaimed to the Countess Masco, whom he had taken to the supper room.
Surely no wife was ever more loved and appreciated than the princess, even though her husband had one serious failing. But then, did not some American husbands also gamble? In the Masco household too, the bonny Kate was certainly in no need of sympathy. That her position was not as good as her husband's name should have given her was her own fault.
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