"It was not lace, I am sure," said Marcantonio, with an air of conviction, as he helped himself to the salad which Temistocle handed him. "But it looked very new. I hope she made no mistake."
The comic side of the situation suddenly forced itself on Leonora, as it often will happen with people on the eve of great danger. A lackey in Paris once danced a jig on the scaffold before he was broken on the wheel. Leonora laughed aloud.
"Would it amuse you, for instance," inquired Marcantonio with a puzzled look, "to have a good handkerchief destroyed to tie up the boy's finger?"
It seemed so funny to Leonora to think that on the morrow her entire stock of handkerchiefs would be at the disposal of all the gardeners in Sorrento if they chanced to cut their fingers.
"No--not that," she said. "It is so odd that you should take so much trouble about it--or care."
"Poor people," said Marcantonio, "one must do what one can for them."
And so their last conversation tottered to its end in a round of domestic triviality, so that Leonora wondered how she could have borne it so long. But, in truth, Marcantonio was so much afraid of rousing her opposition that evening, after the scene that had taken place, that he purposely avoided every intelligent subject, and did violence to his own preference for the sake of keeping the peace. He liked to talk politics, he liked to talk of Rome, of society, of a hundred things, but of late he had found it very hard to talk peaceably about anything.
After dinner Marcantonio smoked, and Leonora sat beside him, with a little worsted work which she did with a huge ivory needle. Her heart beat fast as the hour approached when she must part from her husband. She glanced at him from time to time, sitting there so unsuspecting of any surprise, with his cigarette and his "Fanfulla," the witty Roman paper that amused him so much. His delicate, dark features, a little weak perhaps, looked handsome enough in the lamplight, and Leonora thought for a moment that she had never seen him look so well. She was already so far from him in her thoughts that she regarded him as from a distance, with a certain abstracted consideration of his merits that was new to her. Poor Marcantonio! A certain curiosity, which would have been pity if she had allowed it, came over her. She wondered how he would look when she was gone. Ten o'clock--two hours to midnight, and he never saw her before nine in the morning now. Nine and two were eleven. In eleven hours he must know--unless something happened. Would he rage and storm, like a wild beast? Or would he break down and shed tears? Neither, she thought. He did not love her--he was only jealous. Heavens! thought she, if Julius had been in his position, and he in Julius's, could things have ever got to this pass without some fearful outbreak? Ah no! Julius was so hot-tempered and strong. Her thoughts went away with her, and she heaved a quick short breath, suddenly interrupted in the recollection of where she was. Marcantonio looked round.