om. Evidently
something was going on there which appeared to them in the light of a
joke, and to most of the guests in that of an insult. Signora Grassini
alone did not appear to have noticed anything; she was fluttering her
fan coquettishly and chattering to the secretary of the Dutch embassy,
who listened with a broad grin on his face.

Gemma paused an instant in the doorway, turning to see if the Gadfly,
too, had noticed the disturbed appearance of the company. There was no
mistaking the malicious triumph in his eyes as he glanced from the face
of the blissfully unconscious hostess to a sofa at the end of the room.
She understood at once; he had brought his mistress here under some
false colour, which had deceived no one but Signora Grassini.

The gipsy-girl was leaning back on the sofa, surrounded by a group
of simpering dandies and blandly ironical cavalry officers. She was
gorgeously dressed in amber and scarlet, with an Oriental brilliancy
of tint and profusion of ornament as startling in a Florentine
literary salon as if she had been some tropical bird among sparrows and
starlings. She herself seemed to feel out of place, and looked at the
offended ladies with a fiercely contemptuous scowl. Catching sight of
the Gadfly as he crossed the room with Gemma, she sprang up and came
towards him, with a voluble flood of painfully incorrect French.

"M. Rivarez, I have been looking for you everywhere! Count Saltykov
wants to know whether you can go to his villa to-morrow night. There
will be dancing."

"I am sorry I can't go; but then I couldn't dance if I did. Signora
Bolla, allow me to introduce to you Mme. Zita Reni."

The gipsy glanced round at Gemma with a half defiant air and bowed
stiffly. She was certainly handsome enough, as Martini had said, with a
vivid, animal, unintelligent beauty; and the perfect harmony and freedom
of her movements were delightful to see; but her forehead was low and
narrow, and the line of her delicate nostrils was unsympathetic, almost
cruel. The sense of oppression which Gemma had felt in the Gadfly's
society was intensified by the gypsy's presence; and when, a moment
later, the host came up to beg Signora Bolla to help him entertain some
tourists in the other room, she consented with an odd feeling of relief.

*****

"Well, Madonna, and what do you think of the Gadfly?" Martini asked as
they drove back to Florence late at night. "Did you ever see anything
quite so shameless