Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/49

 much to win, and if it was true that he had followed her in disguise to distant lands.

Curatulo profited by his first opportunity of speaking to Anne alone. “I have not had a word with you,” he said, “and this is not as I had planned. I am sorry.”

“I am glad that you are sorry,” answered the girl, in a tone lighter than his own; but she flushed slightly, for there had come a sudden look of wistfulness into the dark Italian eyes.

It was just then that Mrs. Garrison, pleasantly excited by success, came to take Anne home, and she had no more words with Curatulo.

On the drive back her aunt expressed surprise that he had not talked with her more. “I thought he would be one of the men we saw something of,” she said.

Anne laughed and turned her face away. Was it possible that Aunt Margaret had not seen? The girl was radiant and excited as a child on Christmas morning because of what she felt to be her new conquest, and of all the men she had met in Rome Gino Curatulo seemed to her the one most worth conquering, both by reason of the glamour lent to him by his desperate romance and of the intellectual distinction of his few writings.

“It is just as well for you not to see much of