the proceedings for annulling the marriage, and in particular of the plea
put forward by Benedetta's advocate Morano. And at last his language
became so free that Orlando, with a glance towards the priest, gently
interposed: "Luigi! Luigi!"

"Yes, you are right, father, I'll say no more," thereupon added the young
Count. "But it's really abominable and ridiculous. Lisbeth, you know, is
highly amused at it."

Orlando again looked displeased, for when visitors were present he did
not like his son to refer to the person whom he had just named. Lisbeth
Kauffmann, very blonde and pink and merry, was barely thirty years of
age, and belonged to the Roman foreign colony. For two years past she had
been a widow, her husband having died at Rome whither he had come to
nurse a complaint of the lungs. Thenceforward free, and sufficiently well
off, she had remained in the city by taste, having a marked predilection
for art, and painting a little, herself. In the Via Principe Amadeo, in
the new Viminal district, she had purchased a little palazzo, and
transformed a large apartment on its second floor into a studio hung with
old stuffs, and balmy in every season with the scent of flowers. The
place was well known to tolerant and intellectual society. Lisbeth was
there found in perpetual jubilation, clad in a long blouse, somewhat of a
_gamine_ in her ways, trenchant too and often bold of speech, but
nevertheless capital company, and as yet compromised with nobody but
Prada. Their _liaison_ had begun some four months after his wife had left
him, and now Lisbeth was near the time of becoming a mother. This she in
no wise concealed, but displayed such candid tranquillity and happiness
that her numerous acquaintances continued to visit her as if there were
nothing in question, so facile and free indeed is the life of the great
cosmopolitan continental cities. Under the circumstances which his wife's
suit had created, Prada himself was not displeased at the turn which
events had taken with regard to Lisbeth, but none the less his incurable
wound still bled.

There could be no compensation for the bitterness of Benedetta's disdain,
it was she for whom his heart burned, and he dreamt of one day wreaking
on her a tragic punishment.

Pierre, knowing nothing of Lisbeth, failed to understand the allusions of
Orlando and his son. But realising that there was some embarrassment
between them, he sought to take countenance by picking from off th