"They have forgotten the baskets, though," he thought to himself. "If they had asked me to go up with them, as they should have done, I would have had them carried up. As it is I will--I will wait till they write for them. I could hardly take them myself." And he lighted a cigarette.
As Leonora mounted the stairway, leaning on her husband's arm, she turned to get a glimpse of the boat gliding away in the distance. She could just see it through one of the windows in the rock.
"Why did you not ask him to come up?" she inquired.
"Why did you not ask him, my angel?" returned Marcantonio.
"I thought you might not like it," she answered.
"Comment donc! He is very amiable, I am sure. But I thought you were tired and had had enough of him,--in short, that you did not want him."
"Ah!" ejaculated Leonora. She felt a little curious sense of pleasure, that was quite new to her, at the idea that her husband could have seriously thought she did not want Mr. Batiscombe.
"Naturally," added Marcantonio, "we ought to have asked him."
"I suppose so," said she, indifferently enough.
"I will call on him to-morrow, and we will have him to dinner, if it is agreeable to you, my dear."
"Oh yes--I do not mind at all," said Leonora. She was thinking about something, and did not speak again till they reached the house.
It was very frivolous, but she was really thinking about the curious expression of Mr. Batiscombe's eyes. She did not remember to have ever seen anything exactly like it. Besides, she had known him, more or less, for some time, and had never noticed it before. Perhaps it was the reflection from the water. But she dreamed that night that she saw those eyes very close to her, and the expression of them frightened her a little, but was not altogether disagreeable.
Julius Batiscombe was a restless man by day and night, after the trip to Castellamare. Marcantonio called upon him, but he was out, and then he received an invitation to dinner from Leonora, with a postscript about the unlucky baskets. He accepted the invitation. What else could he do?
But when the day came he regretted it. He wished he had refused and had gone away. Then he made a fine resolution.
"I will not go to this dinner," he said to himself, savagely, as he walked quickly up and down his room. "I will not go near her again. It is not right, and I will not do it. I will sail over to Naples at once, and send back a telegram of excuse, saying that a matter of the most urgent importance keeps me there. So it is--I should think so--a matter of very urgent importance. Oh! Julius Batiscombe, what an ass you are, to be sure!" With that he crammed some things into a bag, sent for his man, and descended in hot haste to the shore. There was no time to be lost, for it was already four o'clock in the afternoon and the invitation was for eight. He could just reach Naples and send his telegram in time to prevent the Carantoni from waiting for him.