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She would certainly not leave Italy while her husband remained there. She would for a while keep her rooms in Florence, and there should her boy abide. But from time to time, twice a week perhaps, she would go down to Siena and Casalunga, and there form her plans in accordance with her husband's conduct.
As for Sir Marmaduke, Sir Marmaduke was nothing to him. He was almost angry even with Mrs. Trevelyan as he arrived tired, heated, and very dusty, at Siena. It was his purpose to sleep at Siena that night, and to go out to Casalunga early the next morning. If the telegram had not been forwarded, he would send a message on that evening.
But still he was her husband, and the father of her child; and though she could not dare to look forward to happiness in living with him, she could understand that no comfort would be possible to her were she to return to England and to leave him to perish alone at Casalunga. Fate seemed to have intended that her life should be one of misery, and she must bear it as best she might.
"Yes; that is it. You will never trouble me!" She glanced up into his face and saw there the old look which he used to wear when he was at Willesden and at Casalunga; and there had come again the old tone in which he had spoken to her in the bitterness of his wrath: the look and the tone, which had made her sure that he was a madman. "The craft and subtlety of women passes everything!" he said.
"He cannot go far without my knowing it," said she, "because he draws his money in Siena, and lately I have taken to him what he wants. He has not enough with him for a long journey." For Stanbury had suggested that he might be off to seek another residence in another country, and that they would find Casalunga vacant when they reached it on the following Tuesday.
"We had known him so long, Lady Milborough." "I wish you had never known him at all. Poor Louis! If he had only done what I told him at first, all might have been well. 'Go to Naples, with your wife, I said. 'Go to Naples. If he had gone to Naples, there would have been no journeys to Siena, no living at Casalunga, no separation. But he didn't seem to see it in the same light. Poor dear Louis.
Glascock might have been there to meet her. A message had been sent by the wires to Trevelyan, to let him know that Mr. Glascock was himself coming for the boy. Whether such message would or would not be sent out to Casalunga Mr. Glascock had been quite ignorant; but it could, at any rate, do no harm.
Since her journey to Casalunga she had also expressed her unwillingness to leave her husband. Her heart had been greatly softened towards him, and she had declared that where he remained, there would she remain, as near to him as circumstances would admit. It might be that at last her care would be necessary for his comfort.
On inquiry, however, he found that the message had been sent, and that the paper had been put into the Signore's own hand by the Sienese messenger. Then he got into some discourse with the landlord about the strange gentleman at Casalunga. Trevelyan was beginning to become the subject of gossip in the town, and people were saying that the stranger was very strange indeed.
"He will have left other traitors behind him, though none as bad as himself," said Trevelyan. Stanbury, when his cigar was finished, rose and left the husband and wife together on the terrace. There was little enough to be seen at Casalunga, but he strolled about looking at the place.
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