Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/48

 “It is true,” said the Dowager, nodding. “He is one of the few who take the trouble to be nice to an old woman.”

He kissed her hand again, and while he greeted Anne with some eagerness, Mrs. Wallace, followed by a few men, approached the group.

“Dear Lady Fitz-Smith knows that I love her more than anybody,” she said in her loud cordial voice, “but I cannot allow her to monopolize my new friend any longer;” and she presented two minor diplomats, whom Anne found amusing and amused in much the same way as the young men of her own country.

Curatulo sat by the Dowager and made no effort to join in the easy gayety of Anne’s conversation. Others came and went, and the groups shifted, but Anne knew that Curatulo never lost consciousness of her presence. Her sudden laugh would draw his eyes to her face, and now and then she felt him to be listening to her words as they reached him through the sound of other voices. The girl herself, while talking gayly and sweetly with the people about her, held in the background of her thoughts the story told by Lady Fitz-Smith, and she wondered how often the dark and dandified man, whose eyes so often sought her face, still remembered the dead woman whom he had risked so