“The truth is that I have had a very—­a very—­how shall I say?—­abominable adventure happen to me.”

The energy of the epithet was sufficiently startling in that man of moderate feelings and toned-down vocabulary.  The word unpleasant I should have thought would have fitted amply the worst experience likely to befall a man of his stamp.  And an adventure, too.  Incredible!  But it is in human nature to believe the worst; and I confess I eyed him stealthily, wondering what he had been up to.  In a moment, however, my unworthy suspicions vanished.  There was a fundamental refinement of nature about the man which made me dismiss all idea of some more or less disreputable scrape.

“It is very serious.  Very serious.”  He went on, nervously.  “I will tell you after dinner, if you will allow me.”

I expressed my perfect acquiescence by a little bow, nothing more.  I wished him to understand that I was not likely to hold him to that offer, if he thought better of it later on.  We talked of indifferent things, but with a sense of difficulty quite unlike our former easy, gossipy intercourse.  The hand raising a piece of bread to his lips, I noticed, trembled slightly.  This symptom, in regard to my reading of the man, was no less than startling.

In the smoking-room he did not hang back at all.  Directly we had taken our usual seats he leaned sideways over the arm of his chair and looked straight into my eyes earnestly.

“You remember,” he began, “that day you went away?  I told you then I would go to the Villa Nazionale to hear some music in the evening.”

I remembered.  His handsome old face, so fresh for his age, unmarked by any trying experience, appeared haggard for an instant.  It was like the passing of a shadow.  Returning his steadfast gaze, I took a sip of my black coffee.  He was systematically minute in his narrative, simply in order, I think, not to let his excitement get the better of him.

After leaving the railway station, he had an ice, and read the paper in a cafe.  Then he went back to the hotel, dressed for dinner, and dined with a good appetite.  After dinner he lingered in the hall (there were chairs and tables there) smoking his cigar; talked to the little girl of the Primo Tenore of the San Carlo theatre, and exchanged a few words with that “amiable lady,” the wife of the Primo Tenore.  There was no performance that evening, and these people were going to the Villa also.  They went out of the hotel.  Very well.

At the moment of following their example—­it was half-past nine already—­he remembered he had a rather large sum of money in his pocket-book.  He entered, therefore, the office and deposited the greater part of it with the book-keeper of the hotel.  This done, he took a carozella and drove to the seashore.  He got out of the cab and entered the Villa on foot from the Largo di Vittoria end.

He stared at me very hard.  And I understood then how really impressionable he was.  Every small fact and event of that evening stood out in his memory as if endowed with mystic significance.  If he did not mention to me the colour of the pony which drew the carozella, and the aspect of the man who drove, it was a mere oversight arising from his agitation, which he repressed manfully.