chiselled copper dish on his writing table, lit a cigarette, and
looked out of the window. His aunt's note was too affectionate and too
anxious to bode well, and he was tempted to write that he could not go.
It would be pleasant to end the afternoon with a book and a cup of tea,
and then to dine alone and dream away the evening in soothing silence.

But he had promised to go; and, moreover, nothing was of any real
importance at all, nothing whatsoever, from the moment of beginning life
to the instant of leaving it. He therefore dressed and went out again.

CHAPTER II

Lamberto Lamberti never wasted time, whether he was at sea, doing his
daily duty as an officer, or ashore in Africa, fighting savages, or on
leave, amusing himself in Rome, or Paris, or London. Time was life, and
life was far too good to be squandered in dawdling. In ten minutes after
he had reached his room he was ready to go out again. As he took his hat
and gloves, his eye fell on a note which he had not seen when he had
come in.

He opened it carelessly and found the same formal invitation which Guido
had received at the same time. The Countess Fortiguerra requested the
pleasure of his company at the Villa Palladio between four and six, and
the date was just a fortnight ahead.

Lamberti was a Roman, and though he had only seen the Countess three or
four times in his life, he remembered very well that she had been twice
married, and that her first husband had been a certain Count Palladio,
whose name was vaguely connected in Lamberti's mind with South American
railways, the Suez Canal, and a machine gun that had been tried in the
Italian navy; but it was not a Roman name, and he could not remember any
villa that was called by it. Palladio--it recalled something else,
besides a great architect--something connected with Pallas--but
Lamberti was no great scholar. Guido would know. Guido knew everything
about literature, ancient and modern--or at least Lamberti thought so.

He had kept his cab while he dressed, and in a few minutes the little
horse had toiled up the long hill that leads to Porta Pinciana, and
Lamberti got out at the gate of one of those beautiful villas of which
there are still a few within the walls of Rome. It belonged to a
foreigner of infinite taste, whose love of roses was proverbial. A
legend says that some of them were watered with the most carefully
prepared beef tea from the princely kitc