In the afternoon, therefore, he sallied out, and went boldly to the Palazzo Carmandola.  He inquired of the porter whether the Signor Conte had gone out, and just as he had expected, so he found it.  Old Lira had left the house ten minutes earlier, to go to the funeral.  Nino ran up the stairs and rang the bell.  The footman opened the door, and Nino quickly slipped a five-franc note into his hand, which he had no difficulty in finding.  On asking if the signorina were at home, the footman nodded, and added that Professor De Pretis was with her, but she would doubtless see Professor Cardegna as well.  And so it turned out.  He was ushered into the great drawing-room, where the piano was.  Hedwig came forward a few steps from where she had been standing beside De Pretis, and Nino bowed low before her.  She had on a long dark dress, and no ornament whatever, save her beautiful bright hair, so that her face was like a jewel set in gold and velvet.  But, when I think of it, such a combination would seem absurdly vulgar by the side of Hedwig von Lira.  She was so pale and exquisite and sad that Nino could hardly look at her.  He remembered that there were violets, rarest of flowers in Rome in January, in her belt.

To tell the truth, Nino had expected to find her stern and cold, whereas she was only very quiet and sorrowful.

“Will you forgive me, signorina, for this rashness?” he asked, in a low voice.

“In that I receive you I forgive you, sir,” she said.  He glanced toward De Pretis, who seemed absorbed in some music at the piano and was playing over bits of an accompaniment.  She understood, and moved slowly to a window at the other end of the great room, standing among the curtains.  He placed himself in the embrasure.  She looked at him long and earnestly, as if finally reconciling the singer with the man she had known so long.  She found him changed, as I had, in a short time.  His face was sterner and thinner and whiter than before, and there were traces of thought in the deep shadows beneath his eyes.  Quietly observing him, she saw how perfectly simple and exquisitely careful was his dress, and how his hands bespoke that attention which only a gentleman gives to the details of his person.  She saw that, if he were not handsome, he was in the last degree striking to the eye, in spite of all his simplicity, and that he would not lose by being contrasted with all the dandies and courtiers in Rome.  As she looked, she saw his lip quiver slightly, the only sign of emotion he ever gives, unless he loses his head altogether, and storms, as he sometimes does.

“Signorina,” he began, “I have come to tell you a story; will you listen to it?”

“Tell it me,” said she, still looking in his face.