A distant footfall echoed from far up the stone staircase. Once more as
she heard it she pressed his hand to her heart with all her might, and
he, with his left round her neck, drew her veiled face against his and
held it there an instant in simple pressure, not trying to kiss her.

Then those two separated and went down the remaining steps in silence,
side by side, and very demurely, as if nothing had happened. The
Countess's brougham was in the courtyard, and the porter, just going
into his lodge under the archway, touched his big-visored cap to
Lamberti and glanced at Cecilia carelessly as they went out. Petersen
was sitting in an open cab in the blazing sun, under a large white
parasol lined with green cotton, and her mistress was seated beside her
before she had time to rise. Cecilia had quickly turned up her veil over
the brim of her hat as soon as she had passed the porter's lodge, for he
knew her face and she did not wish him to see her go out with Lamberti.

"Thank you," she said in a matter-of-fact tone as Lamberti stood hat in
hand in the sun by the step of the cab. "Palazzo Massimo," she called
out to the coach-man.

She nodded to Lamberti indifferently, and the cab drove quickly away to
the right, rattling over the white paving-stones of the Piazza Farnese
in the direction of San Carlo a Catinari.

"Did you see your mother?" Petersen asked. "She stopped the carriage and
called me when she saw me, and she said she was going to ask after
Signor d'Este. I said you had gone up to the embassy."

"No," Cecilia answered, "I did not see her. We shall be at home before
she is."

She did not speak again on the way. Petersen was too near-sighted and
unsuspicious to see that she surreptitiously loosened the brown veil
from her hat, got it down beside her on the other side, and rolled it up
into a ball with one hand. Somehow, when she reached her own door, it
was inside the parasol, just where the revolver had been half an hour
earlier.

Lamberti put on his straw hat and glanced indifferently at the departing
cab as he turned away, quite sure that Cecilia would not look round. He
went back into the palace, feeling for a cigar in his outer breast
pocket. His hands felt numb with cold under the scorching sun, and he
knew that he was taking pains to look indifferent and to move as if
nothing extraordinary had happened to him; for in a few minutes he would
be face to face with Guido d'Este and the Countess Fortigu