e was really to come
down to-night into the yellow drawing-room where she spent so many
weary hours of a morning listening to Mamie scraping her Strad while
the German who was supposed to teach her possessed his soul in
patience. She put on her black silk dress. It was a guinea robe bought
at a sale in Oxford Street the year before, a reach-me-down garment
for women to sneer at and men to describe vaguely as something dark,
and she hated the poor thing.

Most women believe that the men who like them in cotton frocks would
adore them in cloth of gold, and are convinced that the secret of
Cleopatra's charm lay in her extensive wardrobe.

Avenel. It had shocked Olive to hear his name uttered by alien lips,
as it hurt her to suppose that he came often to the Palazzo Lorenzoni.
She would not suppose it, and, indeed, nothing that Mamie had said
could lead her to think that he was a friend of the family. They had
clutched at him greedily, and he had repaid with an impertinence. That
was all.

The third footman, whose duty it was to attend upon her, brought two
covered dishes on a tray at eight o'clock, and soon after nine he came
again to fetch her.

There was a superabundance of gorgeous lackeys in the corridors that
had been dusty and deserted five years before, and a gigantic _Suisse_
stood always on guard now outside the palace gates. The Marchesa would
have liked to have had outriders in her scarlet livery when she went
out driving in the streets of Florence, but her husband warned her
that some mad anarchist might take her for the Queen, and so she
contented herself with a red racing motor. The millions old Whittaker
had made availed to keep his widow and the man who had given her a
title in almost regal state. They entertained largely, and the Via
Tornabuoni was often blocked with the carriages and motors that
brought their guests. Olive, sitting alone in her chilly bedroom,
mending her stockings or trying to read, heard voices and laughter as
the doors opened--harsh Florentine and high English voices, and the
shrill sounds of American mirth--night after night. But the Lorenzoni
dined _en famille_ sometimes, as even marquises and millionaires may
do, and there were but two shirt-fronts and comparatively few diamonds
in the great golden shining room when she entered it.

The Marchesa, handsome, hard-featured, gorgeous in grey and silver,
did not choose to notice her daughter's governess; she was deep in
talk with