Roma was biting her compressed lips and breathing audibly.
"How am I to defend myself against the humiliations I suffer in the
minds of the public? There is only one way, and that is to allow it to
be believed that, in spite of all appearances, you are still playing a
part, that you are going to all lengths to punish the enemy who traduced
you and publicly degraded you."
Roma tried to laugh, but the laugh was broken in her throat by a rising
sob.
"I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at all events,
will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life,
and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety
and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play
the old part--shall I say the Scriptural part?--of possessing yourself
of the inmost secrets of his soul."
The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut
Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn.
"Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think
that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of
hatred, let it do so."
The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door.
"Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary.
"Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My
steward at Albano?"
An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an
odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room.
"Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a
rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by
this time, perhaps."
"It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly
as full of bloom as the Signorina herself."
"Well, what news from Albano?"
The steward told a long story of operations on the estates--planting
birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing,
draining, and sowing.
"And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers.
"Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the
doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of
my errand."
"Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and
sorted them.
The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she
would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in
yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It
was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary
Magdalene.