“Good-morning, Provana,” she said, frowning slightly and biting her lip; “since when have you been a frequenter of museums and a lover of the ancient statues of Faustina and Britannicus?”
“Oh, I don’t care for them, cara Signora,” he hastened to say with an ironical smile, “I don’t understand them, and, therefore, I detest them.”
“To be able to speak to you alone in a place which is completely deserted at this hour and season.”
“Why don’t you come to my house?” she replied, growing more austere; “I am alone sometimes.”
“Yes; but Marco Fiore can come there any minute, neither can you deny him entrance,” he replied coldly.
“Do you hate Marco Fiore so much, Provana?”
“I don’t hate him, I envy him,” he added, again becoming the gallant.
“So you hasten to give me a meeting where he must not interfere, to tell me things he must not hear?” she replied with a sardonic laugh.
“But you have come to listen,” he observed craftily.
She bit her lip hard, and extracted from her gold chain-purse a note, folded in four, which she gave to him.
“Take back your letter, Provana, and goodbye.”
“Don’t go, Donna Maria, don’t go. Listen to me since you have come. It is a serious matter.”
“Good-bye, Provana,” she replied, almost reaching the main entrance.
“In Heaven’s name, don’t leave! The matter is really so important;” and his voice trembled with anxiety.
Donna Maria looked at him intently. Gianni Provana, whose correct and gentlemanly face, with its more than forty years, for the most part pleasing and inexpressive in lines and colouring, seemed genuinely moved. His monocle had fallen from its orbit, and he was a little pale. He twisted his moustaches nervously, and his mouth, still fresh in spite of its maturity, seemed to restrain a flow of words with difficulty.
Donna Maria had never seen him thus; Gianni, the man of moderation in every gesture and word, so often sceptical, so often cold, but never agitated, the common type, in fact, of the elegant gentleman who assumes a correct pose from infancy, who cloaks himself with a studied disdain for everything, and most especially for the things he is not aiming at, and the persons he does not understand.
“Really I can’t think of anything important to listen to from you,” she murmured, turning back for a step or two.