She sank back in her chair, giving her head another rueful
shake, and gazed ruefully away, over the sunny landscape,
through the mellow atmosphere, into the golden-hazy distance.
Peter looked at her--and then, quickly, for caution's sake,
looked elsewhere.
"But there were other things to be taken into account," he
said.
The Duchessa raised her eyes. "What other things?" they
gravely questioned.
"Would n't his telling her have been equivalent to a
declaration of love?" questioned he, looking at the signet-ring
on the little finger of his left hand.
"A declaration of love?" She considered for a moment. "Yes, I
suppose in a way it would," she acknowledged. "But even so?"
she asked, after another moment of consideration. "Why should
he not have made her a declaration of love? He was in love
with her, wasn't he?"
The point of frank interrogation in her eyes showed clearly,
showed cruelly, how detached, how impersonal, her interest was.
"Frantically," said Peter. For caution's sake, he kept HIS
eyes on the golden-hazy peaks of Monte Sfionto. "He had been
in love with her, in a fashion, of course, from the beginning.
But after he met her, he fell in love with her anew. His mind,
his imagination, had been in love with its conception of her.
But now he, the man, loved her, the woman herself, frantically,
with just a downright common human love. There were
circumstances, however, which made it impossible for him to
tell her so."
"What circumstances?" There was the same frank look of
interrogation. "Do you mean that she was married?"
"No, not that. By the mercy of heaven," he pronounced, with
energy, "she was a widow."
The Duchessa broke into an amused laugh.
"Permit me to admire your piety," she said.
And Peter, as his somewhat outrageous ejaculation came back to
him, laughed vaguely too.
"But then--?" she went on. "What else? By the mercy of
heaven, she was a widow. What other circumstance could have
tied his tongue?"
"Oh," he answered, a trifle uneasily, "a multitude of
circumstances. Pretty nearly every conventional barrier the
world has invented, existed between him and her. She was a
frightful swell, for one thing."
"A frightful swell--?" The Duchessa raised her eyebrows.
"Yes," said Peter, "at a vertiginous height above him--horribly
'aloft and lone' in the social hierarchy." He tried to smile.
"What could that matter?" the Duchessa objected simply. "Mr.
Wildmay is a gentleman."