One day he had a great shock.  The house party were assembling in the drawing-room, when in sailed the great lady, the ever-memorable great lady, the Marchioness of Chudley, who had spoken to him and smiled on him in the Bludston factory.  Fear laid a cold grip on his heart.  He thought of pleading weakness and running away to the safe obscurity of his room.  But it was too late.  The procession was formed immediately, and he found himself in his place with his partner on his arm.  Dinner was torture.  What he said to his neighbours he knew not.  He dared not look up the table where Lady Chudley sat in full view.  Every moment he expected—­ridiculous apprehension of an accusing conscience—­Colonel Winwood to come and tap him on the shoulder and bid him begone.  But nothing happened.  Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Fate drove him into a corner near Lady Chudley, whose eyes he met clear upon him.  He turned away hurriedly and plunged into conversation with a young soldier standing by.  Presently he heard Miss Winwood’s voice.

“Mr. Savelli, I want to introduce you to Lady Chudley.”

The fear gripped him harder and colder.  How could he explain that he was occupying his rightful place in that drawing-room?  But he held himself up and resolved to face the peril like a man.  Lady Chudley smiled on him graciously—­how well he remembered her smile!—­and made him sit by her side.  She was a dark, stately woman of forty, giving the impression that she could look confoundedly cold and majestic when she chose.  She wore diamonds in her hair and a broad diamond clasp to the black velvet round her throat.

“Miss Winwood has been telling me what an awful time you’ve had, Mr. Savelli,” she said pleasantly.  “Now, whenever I hear of people having had pneumonia I always want to talk to them and sympathize with them.”

“That’s very kind of you, Lady Chudley,” said Paul.

“Only a fellow-feeling.  I nearly died of it once myself.  I hope you’re getting strong.”

“I’m feeling my strength returning every day.  It’s a queer new joy.”

“Isn’t it?”

They discussed the exhilaration of convalescence.  It was a ’wonderful springtide.  They reverted to the preceding misery.

“You’re far luckier than I was,” she remarked.  “You’ve had a comfy English house to be ill in.  I was in a stone-cold palazzo in Florence—­in winter.  Ugh!  Shall I ever forget it?  I don’t want to speak evil of Italy to an Italian—­”

“I’m only Italian by descent,” exclaimed Paul, with a laugh, his first frank laugh during the whole of that gloomy evening.  And he laughed louder than was necessary, for, as it suddenly dawned upon him that he did not in the least recall to her mind the grimy little Bludston boy, the cold hand of fear was dissolved in a warm gush of exultation.  “You can abuse Italy or any country but England as much as you like.”

“Why mustn’t I abuse England?”