“I wish to know whether she sent a note to Saint Moritz by a messenger.  Can you find out, without asking her a direct question?  I am very anxious to know.”

“I will try, but it will not be easy,” said Regina, watching him.

She had made up her mind that the blow was coming, and that Marcello was only putting off the moment when she must be told that he meant to leave her.  She was very quiet, and waited for him to speak again, for she was too proud to ask him questions.  His inquiry about Settimia was in some way connected with what was to come.  He sat down by the table, and drummed upon it absently with his fingers for a moment.  Then he looked up suddenly and met her eyes; his look of troubled preoccupation faded all at once, and he smiled and held out one hand to draw her nearer.

“Forgive me,” he said.  “All sorts of things have happened to-day.  I have been annoyed.”

She came and bent over him, turning his face up to hers with her hands, very gently.  His eyes lightened slowly, and his lips parted a little.

“You are not tired of Regina yet,” she said.

“No!” he laughed.  “But you were right,” he added, almost immediately.

“I knew I was,” she answered, but not as she had expected to say the words when she had seen him come in.

She dared not hope to keep him always, but she had not lost him yet, and that was enough for the moment.  The weight had fallen from her heart, and the pain was gone.

“Was it what I thought?” she asked softly.  “Does your stepfather wish to separate us?”

“For a little while,” Marcello answered.  “He says we ought to part for a few weeks, so that I may find out whether I love you enough to marry you!”

“And he almost persuaded you that he was right,” said Regina.  “Is that what happened?”

“That—­and something else.”

“Will you tell me, heart of my heart?”

In the falling twilight he told her all that had passed through his mind, from the moment when he had seen Settimia’s handwriting on the note.  Then Regina’s lips moved.

“He shall pay!” she was saying under her breath.  “He shall pay!”

“What are you saying?” Marcello asked.

“An Ave Maria,” she answered.  “It is almost dark.”

CHAPTER XIV

The little house in Trastevere was shut up, but the gardener had the keys, and came twice a week to air the rooms and sweep the paths and water the shrubs.  He was to be informed by Settimia of Regina’s return in time to have everything ready, but he did not expect any news before the end of September; and if he came regularly, on Tuesday and Saturday, and did his work, it was because he was a conscientious person in his way, elderly, neat, and systematic, a good sort of Roman of the old breed.  But if he came on other days, as he often did, not to air the rooms, but to water and tend certain plants, and