“Come, Don Giovanni, we must be going,” said Donna Tullia.  “What in the world are you thinking of?  You look as though you had been turned into a statue!”

“I beg your pardon,” returned Saracinesca, suddenly called back from the absorbing train of his unpleasant thoughts.  “Good-bye, Duchessa; good-bye, Astrardente—­a pleasant drive to you.”

“You will always regret not having come, you know,” cried Madame Mayer, shaking hands with both the occupants of the carriage.  “We shall probably end by driving to Albano, and staying all night—­just fancy!  Immense fun—­not even a comb in the whole party!  Good-bye.  I suppose we shall all meet to-night—­that is, if we ever come back to Rome at all.  Come along, Giovanni,” she said, familiarly dropping the prefix from his name.  After all, he was a sort of cousin, and people in Rome are very apt to call each other by their Christian names.  But Donna Tullia knew what she was about; she knew that Corona d’Astrardente could never, under any circumstances whatever, call Saracinesca plain “Giovanni.”  But she had not the satisfaction of seeing that anything she said produced any change in Corona’s proud dark face; she seemed of no more importance in the Duchessa’s eyes than if she had been a fly buzzing in the sunshine.

So Giovanni and Madame Mayer joined their noisy party, and began to climb into their places upon the drag; but before they were prepared to start, the Astrardente carriage turned and drove rapidly out of the field.  The laughter and loud talking came to Corona’s ears, growing fainter and more distant every second, and the sound was very cruel to her; but she set her strong brave lips together, and leaned back, adjusting the blanket over her old husband’s knees with one hand, and shading the sun from her eyes with the parasol she held in the other.

“Thank you, my dear; you are an angel of thoughtfulness,” said the old dandy, stroking his wife’s hand.  “What a singularly vulgar woman Madame Mayer is!  And yet she has a certain little chic of her own.”

Corona did not withdraw her fingers from her husband’s caress.  She was used to it.  After all, he was kind to her in his way.  It would have been absurd to have been jealous of the grossly flattering speeches he made to other women; and indeed he was as fond of turning compliments to his wife as to any one.  It was a singular relation that had grown up between the old man and the young girl he had married.  Had he been less thoroughly a man of the world, or had Corona been less entirely honest and loyal and self-sacrificing, there would have been small peace in their wedlock.  But Astrardente, decayed roue and worn-out dandy as he was, was in love with his wife; and she, in all the young magnificence of her beauty, submitted to be loved by him, because she had promised that she would do so, and because, having sworn, she regarded the breaking of her faith by the smallest act of unkindness as a thing beyond the bounds