It must have been a day or two after this that we were invited to the Roman Hunt.  I had no wish to go, but Alma who had begun to use me in order to “save her face” in relation to my husband, induced me to drive them out in a motor-car to the place on the Campagna where they were to mount their horses.

“Dear sweet girl!” said Alma.  “How could we possibly go without you?”

It was Sunday, and I sat between Alma in her riding habit and my husband in his riding breeches, while we ran through the Porta San Giovanni, and past the osterie where the pleasure-loving Italian people were playing under the pergolas with their children, until we came to the meeting-ground of the Hunt, by the Trappist monastery of Tre Fontane.

A large company of the Roman aristocracy were gathered there with their horses and hounds, and they received Alma and my husband with great cordiality.  What they thought of me I do not know, except that I was a childish and complacent wife; and when at the sound of the horn the hunt began, and my husband and Alma went prancing off with the rest, without once looking back, I asked myself in my shame and distress if I could bear my humiliation much longer.

But then came a moment of unexpected pleasure.  A cheerful voice on the other side of the car said: 

“Good morning, Lady Raa.”

It was the young Irish doctor from the steamer.  His ship had put into Naples for two days, and, like Martin Conrad before my marriage, he had run up to look at Rome.

“But have you heard the news?” he cried.

“What news?”

“About the South Pole Expedition—­they’re on their way home.”

“So soon?”

“Yes, they reached New Zealand on Saturday was a week.”

“And . . . and . . . and Martin Conrad?”

“He’s well, and what’s better, he has distinguished himself.”

“I . . .  I . . .  I knew he would.”

“So did I!  The way I was never fearing that if they gave Mart half a chance he would come out top!  Do or die—­that was his watch-word.”

“I know!  I know!”

His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyous rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with “Yes,” “Yes,” “Yes”) he told of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the London papers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned—­how he had been put in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had worked wonders.

“How splendid!  How glorious!  How perfectly magnificent!” I said.

“Isn’t it?” said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quick questions and replies like children playing at battledore and shuttlecock.  Then he said: 

“But I’m after thinking it’s mortal strange I never heard him mention you.  There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that was a man—­a boy, I mean.  Mally he was calling him—­that’s short for Maloney, I suppose.”