erra. He lit
his cigar under the archway, and blew a cloud of smoke before him as he
turned into the staircase; but on the first landing he stopped, just
where he had stood with Cecilia. He paused, his cigar between his teeth,
his legs a little apart as if he were on deck in a sea-way, and his
hands behind him. He looked curiously at the wall where she had leaned
against it, and he smoked vigorously. At last he took out a small pocket
knife and with the point of the blade scratched a little cross on the
hard surface, looked at it, touched it again and was satisfied, returned
the knife to his pocket, and went quietly upstairs. Most seafaring men
do absurdly sentimental things sometimes. Lamberti's expression had
neither softened nor changed while he was scratching the mark, and when
he went on his way he looked precisely as he did when he was going up
the steps of the Ministry to attend a meeting of the Commission. He had
good nerves, as he had told the specialist whom he had consulted in the
spring.

But he would have given much not to meet Guido for a day or two, though
he did not in the least mind meeting the Countess. Cecilia could keep a
secret as well as he himself, almost too well, and there was not the
slightest danger that her mother should guess the truth from the
behaviour of either of them, even when together. Nor would Guido guess
it for that matter; that was not what Lamberti was thinking of just
then.

He felt that chance, or fate, had made him the instrument of a sort of
betrayal for which he was not responsible, and as he had never been in
such a position in his life, even by accident, it was almost as bad at
first as if he had intentionally taken Cecilia from his friend. He had
always been instinctively sure that she would love him some day, but
when he had at last spoken he had really not had the least idea that she
already loved him. He had acted on an impulse as soon as he was quite
sure that she would never marry Guido; perhaps, if he could have
analysed his feelings, as Guido could have done, he would have found
that he really meant to shock her a little, or frighten her by the
point-blank statement that he loved her, in the hope of widening the
distance which he supposed to exist between them, and thereby making it
much more improbable that she should ever care for him.

Even now he did not see how he could ever marry her and remain Guido's
friend. He was far too sensible to tell Guido the trut