The third movement, executed in faultless style, finished in a burst of applause. Andrea rose and approached Elena--
'Oh, there you are, Ugenta! Where have you been all this time?' exclaimed the Princess--'In the "pays du Tendre?"'
'And your incognita?' asked Elena lightly as she pulled a bunch of violets out of her muff and sniffed them.
'She is a great friend of my cousin Francesca's, Donna Maria Ferrès y Capdevila, the wife of the new minister for Guatemala,' Andrea replied without turning a hair--'a beautiful creature and very cultivated--she was at Schifanoja with Francesca last September.'
'And what of Francesca?' Elena broke in--'do you know when she is coming back?'
'I had the latest news from her a day or two ago--from San Remo. Fernandino is better, but I am afraid she will have to stay on there another month at least, perhaps longer.'
The last movement, a very short one, began. Elena and the Princess occupied two chairs at the end of the room, against the wall under a dim mirror in which the melancholy hall was reflected. Elena listened with bent head, slowly drawing through her fingers the long ends of her boa.
The concert over, she said to Sperelli: 'Will you see us to the carriage?'
As she entered her carriage after the Princess, she turned to him again--'Won't you come too? We will drop Eva at the Palazzo Fiano, and I can put you down wherever you like.'
'Thanks,' answered Andrea, nothing loath. On the Corso they were obliged to proceed very slowly, the whole roadway being taken up by a seething, tumultuous crowd. From the Piazza di Montecitorio and the Piazza Colonna came a perfect uproar that swelled and rose and fell and rose again, mingled with shrill trumpet-blasts. The tumult increased as the gray cold twilight deepened. Horror at the tragedy enacted in a far-off land made the populace howl with rage; men broke through the dense crowd running and waving great bundles of newspapers. Through all the clamour, the one word Africa rang distinctly.
'And all this for four hundred brutes who had died the death of brutes!' murmured Andrea, withdrawing his head from the carriage window.
'What are you saying!' cried the Princess.
At the corner of the Chigi palace the commotion assumed the aspect of a riot. The carriage had to stop. Elena leaned forward to look out, and her face emerging from the shadows and lighted up by the glare of the gas and the reflection of the sunset seemed of a ghastly whiteness, an almost icy pallor, reminding Andrea of some head he had seen before, he could not say where or when--in some gallery or chapel.