she was perplexed or offended--he could not tell which--by his neglect.
Too late he understood that in his sensitive vanity he had ignored the
common rules of ordinary courtesy, and he hastened to the Palace
Leaney, and sent in his card.

A veritable museum of historic memories is one of these old Italian
palaces, with a foundation wall laid in the days of the old Roman
Empire, an interior building dating perhaps from the Middle Ages or the
Transition period, and an external court with facades and porticoes of
Renaissance or sixteenth-century work. Not less reminiscent of many
bygone ages are the ornamentation and decorative details; and in the
rooms, statuary plundered from the Greek islands or brought by the
Crusaders from Constantinople itself, contrasts oddly with pictures,
_bric-a-brac_, and furniture in all possible styles, from that of
the Byzantine epoch to that of the present day. A grand old mansion of
this kind, such as can be found at its best in certain of the Italian
seaports, seems to summarise the larger history of human civilisation
as well as the private annals of a great family. All this was well
calculated to produce a deep impression on the mind of a visitor,
especially when that visitor was a man of the people, gifted with a
keen faculty of observation; and it served to throw round the woman who
reigned in the noble halls, that bore witness to the ancient glories of
her race, a kind of distinction that gave even to her friendliness a
little air of queenly condescension, and added a touch of stateliness
to her courtesy. Small need for her to keep at a distance, by any
artificial restraint, the man who approached her with a conscious sense
of embarrassment, increased by the magnificence of her surroundings.
The confidence based on the few previous _rencontres_ disappeared.
With the thought of his unexpiated discourtesy weighing heavy on his
conscience, he entered her presence, subdued, in spite of himself, by
the sumptuous staircases, the lofty apartments, the storied walls, the
sense of contact with a long historic past. If he had brought her too
near him in the rash licence of his imagination, now, with that same
imagination fluttered and confused, he fancied her even further from
him than perhaps she really was.

No wonder he derived little satisfaction from this first visit to his
princess. At her invitation he came again, but the sense of failure
that had settled over him on the former occasion