Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/134



T was Lady Fitz-Smith who finally explained away the suspicions she had aroused concerning Gino’s walk on the Corso Italia. “Curatulo was fond of the woman,—it was after the death of Maria Pavlowa,—and she had been mad about him. She was married at the time, and of course that was in one sense an advantage, for when a woman is married the man has everything to gain and nothing to risk!”

Mrs. Garrison did not repress her start of amazed indignation at this point of the Dowager’s monologue.

“I think Curatulo soon grew tired of her,” continued Lady Fitz-Smith, “but he was very loyal, as Italians often are; ‘constant but not faithful.’ He didn’t care for any one else, and was both too indolent and too kind-hearted to desert her. When her husband was found to have tuberculosis and ordered to Switzerland his wife did not dare not to go with him, and I think our Gino was relieved enough. The husband lived in the mountains some years and then he died, but in the mean time she