rawer, because his master was not to be
married after all, and might do something foolish, and ought to be
watched continually, and he said that he would come back and stay
through the night. The man had been in his own service, and could be
trusted now that he had slept.

Lamberti left the Palazzo Farnese and walked slowly homeward in the
white glare, smoking steadily all the way, and looking straight before
him.

CHAPTER XXV

The Countess wrote that afternoon to Baron Goldbirn, of Vienna, and to
the Princess Anatolie, now in Styria, that the engagement between her
daughter and Signor Guido d'Este was broken off by mutual agreement. She
had told Cecilia that she had been to see Guido and had confessed the
plain truth, and that there need be no more comedies, because men never
died of that sort of thing after all, and it was much better for them to
be told everything outright. Cecilia seemed perfectly satisfied and
thanked her. Then the Countess said she would like to go to Brittany, or
perhaps to Norway, where she had never been, but that if Cecilia
preferred Scotland, she would make no objection. She would go anywhere,
provided the place were cool, and on the top of a mountain, or by the
sea, but she wished to leave at once. Everything had been ready for
their departure several days ago.

"You do not really mean to leave Rome till Guido--I mean, till Signor
d'Este is out of all danger, do you?" asked the young girl.

"My dear, since you are not going to marry him, what difference can it
make?" asked the Countess, unconsciously heartless. "The sooner we go,
the better. You are as pale as a sheet and as thin as a skeleton. You
will lose all your looks if you stay here!"

Cecilia was in a loose white silk garment with open sleeves. She looked
at the perfect curve of her arm, from the slender wrist to the
delicately rounded elbow, and smiled.

"I am not a skeleton yet," she said.

"You will be in a few days," her mother answered cheerfully. "There is a
telegraph to everywhere nowadays, and Signor Lamberti will be here and
can send us news all the time. You cannot possibly go and see the poor
man, you know. If you could only guess how I felt, my dear, when I found
myself there this morning alone with him! I confess, I half expected
that the walls would be covered with the most dreadful pictures, those
things I do not like you to look at in the Paris Salon, you know. Women
ap