The workmen were very busy at the Palazzo Montalto, and the rich widow from Chicago who occupied one of the large apartments was a little nervous, for there is a clause in all leases of portions of Roman palaces to the effect that the owner may turn any tenant out at short notice if he needs the rooms for his own use; and as the good lady had not the slightest idea of the real size of the place, she had long supposed that she was living in the state apartment.

But she need not have disturbed herself and her friends about that. Montalto would as soon have let the place where his mother and his wife had lived with him as he would have put up his titles at auction. He had sent orders that the vast suite was to be got ready in a month’s time, and as no one had expected that he would ever come back to live there, the accumulation of dust was found to be portentous. Moreover, all the carpets had disappeared, no one knew how, the upholstered furniture was all moth-eaten, the window fastenings would not work, the mirrors were hopelessly tarnished, and the ceiling of the ballroom had been badly damaged by the bursting of a water-pipe in the apartment over it.

To make matters worse, the old steward of the Roman estates, whose business it was to keep the palace in order, was in his dotage, and was expected to have a stroke of apoplexy at any moment.

Then one morning a business-like young man arrived from Montalto, the great family seat on the Austrian frontier, with instructions to put matters right, and to lose no time about it. The old Roman steward flew into a frightful rage because the Montalto steward was his superior, and promptly had his stroke of apoplexy, which helped things a little without killing him. The business-like young man spent one whole day in watching the people at work and never said a word, but when the evening came, he had them all paid and he turned them out, to their amazement and mortification. Then he took a cab and drove to the Via San Martino and asked to see the Countess, just before she dressed for dinner. He was a very modest young man, and he waited in the hall for her answer; and when Agostino came back to inquire more particularly who he was and what he wanted, he said that he was the chief steward of Montalto and had a message from His Excellency the Count to Her Excellency the Countess, if she would be so kind as to receive him. In the eyes of the butler he at once became an important personage, and many apologies were offered for having let him wait in the outer hall.

Maria received him in her sitting-room. In her deep mourning she looked unnaturally pale, and her dark eyes seemed very big. She pointed to a chair and sat down herself.

The young man lost no time and told her at once that the Count had sent him to see that the palace was made habitable at once, and desired that the Countess should be consulted on every point about which she was willing to give her opinion. She was to select her own rooms and direct that they should be hung and furnished to her taste, and the Count would esteem it a great favour if she would take the trouble to order everything else to be changed as she thought best, excepting only the late Dowager Countess’s rooms, which he desired should not be touched. Her Excellency doubtless knew which those rooms were, and would she be so very kind as to say when it would be convenient for her to meet her obedient servant at the palace and to give him her orders. He was instructed to spare no trouble or expense in order to please her if possible.

Maria recognised her husband’s formal expressions in what the quiet young man said so fluently. Doubtless Montalto had written every word of his orders with his own hand, and the steward had read them over till he knew them by heart. She thanked him and said she would meet him at the palace the next morning at ten o’clock.

She did not take Leone with her, for she was sure that the great neglected house would be gloomy beyond description, and she did not wish him to have a sad impression of the house in which he had been born, and in which he was now to live. Besides, she could not quite trust herself, and the small boy’s eyes were marvellously quick to detect any change in her face.

The places where things very good or very bad to remember have happened to us are ever afterwards inhabited by invisible ghosts, kind or malignant, who show themselves to us when we revisit the spots they haunt, though they never disturb any one else. Maria knew that; an evil genius had long dwelt under those ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese, and she had exorcised it, but there were spectres in her former home that would not be laid. She bit her lip as she entered the once familiar hall, and saw room after room opening out beyond it in a long perspective that ended in a closed door adorned with mirrors in its panels. That door had always been kept shut when all the others were open; it led into the room that had been her boudoir. Even at that great distance Maria could see how dim the old glasses in the panels had become.

She walked slowly through the apartment, looking to the right and left. Something had been done, but not much. There was a ladder against a wall in one room and the hangings were half torn down; a dozen rolls of new carpet lay in confusion in another, redolent of that extraordinary odour which only perfectly new carpets have; in one of the halls beyond, a quantity of more or less decrepit sofas and chairs had been collected and disembowelled, and the moth-eaten wool and musty horse-hair lay about them in mouldering heaps; the portraits were still in their places on the walls, and Montalto seemed to look sadly down from half a dozen frames at his young wife as she went by in black; there was Montalto in armour and Montalto in black velvet and ruffles, Montalto in a Spanish cloak and Montalto in a flowered silk French coat, with a powdered wig; but it was always Montalto; the likeness between them all from generation to generation had been amazing, and the old pictures made Maria nervous.

The young steward, whose name was Orlando Schmidt, walked by her left, hat in hand, glancing respectfully at her now and then to see whether she was going to say anything. But her lips were pressed together, and he fancied that the rings round her eyes grew darker as she neared the end of the long suite, and still went on towards the closed door with its tarnished mirrors. She looked very pale and tired.

‘Will your Excellency sit down and rest a while?’ he asked.

‘Not yet, thank you. Presently.’

And she went slowly on, slowly and steadily, towards the closed door, till she laid her hand on the chiselled handle and turned it and pushed against the panel. But it would not move.

‘Perhaps it is locked,’ suggested Schmidt. ‘I had not taken it for a real door. I thought the apartment ended here.’

‘No,’ Maria answered in a low tone. ‘This used to be my boudoir. Try and open it. I want to go in.’

The young man tried the handle, put his eye to the keyhole, and tried again. Then he shook his head.

‘It is not a very strong door,’ said Maria. ‘I think we could break it open. I want to go in.’

‘I can certainly break it,’ answered Schmidt.

He threw his shoulder against the crack and pushed with all his might, but though the door creaked a little it would not move.

‘Is there no other way?’ asked Maria impatiently. ‘I must get in!’

‘Oh, yes,’ Schmidt answered, ‘there is another way. I can smash the lock.’

‘I wish you would!’

He stood back and made a little gesture with his hand for her to move aside, and before she knew what he was going to do, the heel of his heavy walking boot struck the lock with the force of a small battering-ram. The door flew back on its hinges into total darkness, and there was a crash of broken glass as one of the mirrors fell from its panel to the marble Venetian pavement.

Maria uttered a little cry of hurt surprise, for what Schmidt had done seemed brutal to her; but she passed him quickly and went on into the dark, and the bits of broken mirror cracked under her tread. She was sure that the room had never been opened since she had left it, and she went straight to one of the windows without running against the furniture; the familiar fastenings had rusted and she could not move them quickly. Schmidt lit a wax-light and followed, but before he reached her side she had succeeded in opening the inner shutters, and the bright light from the slits in the blinds shone into the room through the dim panes.

Maria turned from the window and looked about her. The furniture stood as she had last seen it. A moment later Schmidt threw open the glass and the blinds and the violent sunshine flooded the dusty marble floor, the faded pink silk on the walls, the tarnished inlaid tables, the chairs, and a little sofa near the fireplace.

‘It is too much!’ cried Maria nervously. ‘There is too much light!’

Schmidt drew the blinds near together without quite shutting them. When he looked behind him again Maria was sitting on the little sofa near the fireplace, her face turned from him, and her fingers were nervously pulling at a rent in the pink silk which tore under her touch. But the young steward did not notice the action, and was already making a mental list of the repairs that would be necessary to make the boudoir habitable again. Maria looked ill, and he thought she was tired.

But the evil spirit that haunted the place was there, beside her on the little sofa, and she could hear its demon whisper in her ear. That was a part of her expiation, and she knew it. Then she spoke to Schmidt steadily, but without turning her head.

‘I wish everything taken out of this room,’ she said, and she listened to her own voice to be sure that it did not shake. ‘Everything must be new, the hangings, the ceiling, the furniture, the fireplace. You see how dilapidated it all is, don’t you?’

She asked the question as if to justify her orders.

‘There is nothing fit to keep,’ answered the steward, ‘except that inlaid writing-table and the bookcase.’

‘I prefer to have them changed, too,’ said Maria quickly. ‘Everything! Let the new things be dark. There is too much light here. Not red, either. I hate red. Let everything be dark grey.’

‘A greenish grey, perhaps?’ suggested Schmidt diffidently.

‘Yes, yes! But dark, very dark, with black furniture. Paint this marble fireplace black——’

‘Black?’ exclaimed the young man, with a polite interrogation. ‘Perhaps it would be better to have a new one of black marble then?’

‘Yes—anything, provided it is changed, and everything is new and quite different! That is all I want. And my dressing-room was there.’ She pointed to a second door. ‘My bedroom was beyond it. I’m sure that door is locked, too. Could you go round by the other way and see if the key is on that side?’

She turned her white face to Schmidt. He guessed that she had been moved by some strong association and wished to be alone to recover herself, and in a moment he was gone; for he was a tactful person.

When she was alone she did not bury her face in the corner of the tattered little sofa, nor did any tears rise in her tired eyes; she only sat there quite still, and her head fell forward as if she had fainted; but her fingers slowly tore little shreds from the faded pink silk of the sofa.

Schmidt stayed away a long time. She heard his footsteps at last on a tiled floor in the distance, and raised her hand quickly to cover her eyes, while her lips moved for a moment. When the steward unlocked the second door and came in, she was standing quietly by the window waiting for him.

The worst was over for that day, and though she was still very pale, she was no longer deadly white, and the haunted look that had come back suddenly to her eyes was gone. She went through the house systematically after that, conscientiously fulfilling her husband’s requests; she gave clear directions about her own rooms and the one she meant to give Leone, and made many suggestions about the rest. She showed Schmidt the little apartment once occupied by her mother-in-law, and advised the steward to have it carefully cleaned and set in order, since nothing was to be changed in it. At present, she said, it looked neglected, and the Count would certainly not like to find it so. Schmidt nodded gravely, as if he quite understood. She was so quiet and calm now, that he thought he had been mistaken in thinking her disturbed by some poignant memory. She had probably felt ill.

When she left the palace at last, she told him to let her know when the refurnishing was so far advanced as to make a visit from her necessary, and she thanked him so kindly for his attention that he blushed a little.

For Orlando Schmidt was a modest and well-educated young man, of a respectable Austrian family by his father’s side, but an Italian as to his nationality. He had been to good schools, he had studied scientific farming at an agricultural institute in Upper Austria, and he had followed a commercial course in Milan; he had also learned something about practical building, and was naturally possessed of tolerably good taste.

‘I hope you will stay here and take charge of the Roman estate,’ said the Countess. ‘I fancy the lands are in as bad a condition as the apartment upstairs.’

She smiled graciously, and Schmidt blushed again.

‘Your Excellency is very kind,’ he said modestly, as he stood beside her low phaeton with his hat in his hand. ‘I am lodged here in the palace, if you need me.’

She drove away, and before the carriage turned the corner of the palace on the way to the more central part of the city, she had quite forgotten Orlando Schmidt, though he had made such a favourable impression upon her.

But the young man stood before the great arched entrance and watched her till she was out of sight, with an expression she could not have understood; and afterwards he whistled softly as he turned back to ascend the stairs again in order to make careful notes of all she had said about each room. He began in the boudoir, and he sat down on the little sofa near the fireplace, with his large note-book on his knee, and wrote busily while her words were still fresh in his memory. Once or twice he looked towards the door, which he could see as he sat, and the broken pieces of mirror caught his eye. He remembered that his Italian mother had once told him when he was a boy that it was very unlucky to break a mirror. But he smiled at the recollection, for he was not a superstitious young man, and had received a half-scientific education.

It was nearly twelve o’clock when Maria left the palace. She had not realised that it was so late, and she had told the coachman to take her to a dressmaker’s far down the Corso, near the Piazza del Popolo. She was to have tried on a couple of frocks which were necessary to complete her mourning; but the gun-fire from the Janiculus and the clashing of all the church bells told her that it was noon already, and too late, for Leone always had his dinner with her at half-past twelve. She touched Telemaco’s broad black back with the edge of her parasol to call his attention, and she told him to go home instead of stopping at the dressmaker’s.

He asked whether he should pass through the Villa by Porta Pinciana, that being as near a way as any other, and easy for the horses, and she nodded her assent. She had not been in the Villa since the day when she had walked there alone, and had gone home and found Montalto’s letter.

It was a warm spring morning, but the horses trotted briskly up the main avenue that leads in from the gate, glad to be in the pleasant shade. Maria lowered her parasol to the bottom of the phaeton without shutting it, for she knew she should need it again in a few minutes. There was no other carriage in the avenue just then, but several riders were walking their horses slowly towards the gate after exercising them on the course. The first she met were two civilians, and one of them was Oderisio Boccapaduli. He recognised her from a distance, and before he was near enough to bow he glanced quickly behind him, as if he expected to see some one. She did not know the other man. Oderisio took off his hat, and she smiled and nodded. Then came a captain of artillery on a strong Hungarian horse that was evidently in a bad temper and hard to manage. Maria turned her head to watch them after she had passed, but her carriage was going at a smart pace and she soon looked before her again. Not far ahead were two officers of the Piedmont Lancers, walking their horses and talking together.

One was the same young lieutenant who had jumped his English mare in and out of the ring for her benefit on that morning when she had been on foot. She might have met him there any day. The other was Baldassare del Castiglione, and she had not known that he was in Rome.

She was so startled that she made a movement to raise her open parasol and hide her face; but she instantly understood the absurdity of doing such a thing and dropped it again, and looked steadily towards the advancing horsemen, though for a few seconds she could not see them. They were hidden in a fiery mist that rose between her and them. It dissolved suddenly, and Castiglione was gravely saluting her; his face was calm, but his eyes were blazing blue. The young lieutenant raised his hand to his cap almost at the same instant. With infinite difficulty Maria slowly bent her head in answer, but she did not turn her eyes as the two men passed her, and in another moment she had left them behind.

Then she felt that her heart was beating again, for she was sure that it had quite stopped. But at the same instant her hand unconsciously relaxed, and her open parasol, which was already half over the step of the phaeton, flew out, rolled a little way, and lay in the middle of the road, with the handle upwards.

She sat up quickly and called to Telemaco to stop. But the old man was a little deaf, and she had to call twice before he checked the quickly-trotting pair and brought them to a stand.

‘My parasol!’ she cried, as the coachman looked over his shoulder. ‘Give me the reins and get it,’ she added.

She heard the hoofs of a horse cantering up behind her, and she looked round. Castiglione must have turned in the saddle to look after her, and must have seen the parasol fall. It lay with the handle upward, and parasol handles chanced to be long that year. It was easy for a good rider to bend low and pick the thing up almost without slackening his pace, and in another moment he was beside the carriage giving it back to Maria.

‘Thank you,’ she said faintly. ‘I did not know you were in Rome.’

A quick word rose to his lips, but he checked it. Then he bent down to her from the saddle, on pretence of brushing an imaginary fly from his horse’s shoulder.

‘I thought you would rather not know it from me,’ he said quietly, but so low that the deaf coachman could not hear. ‘Good morning, Contessa,’ he added more loudly, as he straightened himself in the saddle and saluted again.

He was gone, trotting back to join his companion; but she would not look after him when she had told Telemaco to drive on. And all the way home a great wave of joy was surging up round her, to her very feet, and she was trying to climb higher lest it should rise and overwhelm her; and she was clinging to something dark, and cold, and hard as a black marble pillar, that was Montalto, and duty, and death, all in one.

That afternoon a note came for her, brought to the door by a trooper and left with the remark that there was no answer.

It contained the telegram Castiglione had received in Milan, and a sheet of note-paper on which a few words were written in pencil.

‘This explains itself,’ he wrote. ‘It is the inevitable. I shall not try to see you.’ She knew that she ought to be proud of his good faith, but it was not easy.