Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/399

391 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. 391 Rosier still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. " You did right not to go away. I have got some comfort for you." " I need it," the young man murmured, " when I see you so awfully thick with him ! " " Don't speak of him, I will do what I can for you. I am afraid it won't be much, but what I can I will do." He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. "What has suddenly brought you round 1 " " The sense that you are an inconvenience in the doorways ! " she answered, smiling, as she passed him. Half-an-hour later she took leave, with Pansy, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached, Lord Warburton came out of the house, and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Pansy if she had amused herself ; and she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then Isabel, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured gently " Don't forget to send your letter to her father ! " XLIY. THE Countess Gemini was often extremely bored bored, in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an oblig- ing disposition. The Count Gemini was not liked even by those who won from him ; and he bore a name whieh, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a city where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more explan ation than was convenient. The Countess lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not a habitation there. She was ashamed to say how J she had been allowed to go there ; it scarcely made the