For several minutes neither of us spoke1. Then I looked up to meet my friend’s gaze of perturbation.
A waiter was proffering2 cigars. I took one, and waved Poor Jr.‘s hand away from the box of which the waiter made offering.
“Do not remain!” I whispered, and I saw his sad perplexity. “I know her answer has not been given. Will you present him his chance to receive it—just when her sympathy must be stronger for him, since she will think he has had to bear rudeness?”
He went out of the door quickly.
I dod not smoke. I pretended to, while the waiters made the arrangements of the table and took themselves off. I sat there a long, long time waiting for Antonio to do what I hoped I had betrayed him to do.
It befell at last.
Poor Jr. came to the door and spoke in his steady voice. “Ansolini, will you come out here a moment?”
Then I knew that I had succeeded, had made Antonio afraid that I would do the thing he himself, in a panic, had already done—speak evil of another privately3.
As I reached the door I heard him call out foolishly, “But Mr. Poor, I beg you—”
Poor Jr. put his hand on my shoulder, and we walked out into the dark of the terrace. Antonio was leaning against the railing, the beautiful lady standing4 near. Mrs. Landry had sunk into a chair beside her daughter. No other people were upon the terrace.
“Prince Caravacioli has been speaking of you,” said Poor Jr., very quietly.
“Ah?” said I.
“I listened to what he said; then I told him that you were my friend, and that I considered it fair that you should hear what he had to say. I will repeat what he said, Ansolini. If I mistake anything, he can interrupt me.”
Antonio laughed, and in such a way, so sincerely, so gaily5, that I was frightened.
“Very good!” he cried. “I am content. Repeat all.”
“He began,” Poor Jr. went on, quietly, though his hand gripped my shoulder to almost painfulness,—“he began by saying to these ladies, in my presence, that we should be careful not to pick up chance strangers to dine, in Italy, and—and he went on to give me a repetition of his friendly warning about Paris. He hinted things for a while, until I asked him to say what he knew of you. Then he said he knew all about you; that you were an outcast, a left-handed member of his own family, an adventurer—”
“It is finished, my friend,” I said, interrupting him, and gazed with all my soul upon the beautiful lady. Her face was as white as Antonio’s or that of my friend, or as my own must have been. She strained her eyes at me fixedly6; I saw the tears standing still in them, and I knew the moment had come.
“This Caravacioli is my half-brother,” I said.
Antonio laughed again. “Of what kind!”
Oh, he went on so easily to his betrayal, not knowing the United-Statesians and their sentiment, as I did.
“We had the same mother,” I continued, as quietly as I could. “Twenty years after this young—this somewhat young—Prince was born she divorced his father, Caravacioli, and married a poor poet, whose bust7 you can see on the Pincian in Rome, though he died in the cheapest hotel in Sienna when my true brother and I were children. This young Prince would have nothing to do with my mother after her second marriage and—”
“Marriage!” Antonio laughed pleasantly again. He was admirable. “This is an old tale which the hastiness of our American friend has forced us to rehearse. The marriage was never recognized by t............