“No; it’s not that.  He never dreams of her having any will in the matter apart from that of her family.  I can’t make him out.  There’s something wrong with him.  He looks a dozen years older than he did; and his habits are changed too.”

“Do you think—­that is—­it has just come into my head—­do you remember, Ludovico, what I said to you last night at the theatre about the way La Lalli sung her love verses at him?”

“La Lalli again.  Why, she has fascinated you at all events.  You can think of nothing else.  La Lalli and lo zio.  Dio mio!  If you only knew him.  All the prime donne in Europe might sing at him, or make eyes at him, or make love to him, in any manner they liked from morning till night without making any more impression on him than a hundred years, more or less, on the tomb of the Emperor Theodoric out there.  No, anima mia, that’s not it.  No, il povero zio, I am more inclined to think that he is breaking up.  It does happen, sometimes, that your men, who have never known a day’s illness in their lives, break down all of a sudden in that way.  Everybody in the city has been saying that he is changed and ill.  But I must be off, my darling.  I only came to tell you that all was in readiness for you at St. Apollinare.  At least that was my excuse for coming.  But now I must go and see about all sorts of things for the reception to-night.  We shall have all the world at the Palazzo to-night.  And lo zio asked me to see to everything.  Addio, Paolina mia.  You know where my heart will be all the time.  Addio, anima mia.”

CHAPTER VII

Two Interviews

After Ludovico had passed into the sitting-room in the Via di Porta Sisi to pay his visit to Bianca, Quinto Lalli prepared to leave the house in accordance with her suggestion that he should dispose of himself out-of-doors for the present.  But before going he called Gigia the maid, and said, as he stood with the door in his hand: 

“Gigia, cara mia, the Marchese Lamberto is coming here presently; just make use of your sharp ears to hear what passes between him and Bianca; and take heed to it, you understand, so as to be able to give an account of it afterwards if it should be needed.  You need not say anything about it to la bambina till afterwards; I have no secrets from her, you know, and, as soon as the Marchese is gone, you may tell her that you have heard everything, and that I directed you to do so; but better to say nothing about it beforehand.  Inteso?”

“Si, si, Signor Quinto!  Lasci fare a me!”

And, with that, the careful old man went out for his walk, and it was not half-an-hour after Ludovico left the house before the Marchese made his appearance.

Bianca, now having completed her toilette, started from her sofa, and went forward to meet him with both hands extended, and with one of her sunniest smiles.

“This is kind of you, Signor Marchese.  I hoped, ah! how I hoped, that you would come.  If you had not, I don’t know what would have become of me.  My heart was already sinking with the dreadful fear that my little note might have displeased you.  But, thank God, you are here:  and that is enough.”