And with that she made him a deep reverence, and withdrew to the inner room.

2.5.

When the Professor’s gate closed on Odo night was already falling and the oil-lamp at the end of the arched passage-way shed its weak circle of light on the pavement.  This light, as Odo emerged, fell on a retreating figure which resembled that of the blind beggar he had seen crouching on the steps of the Corpus Domini.  He ran forward, but the man hurried across the little square and disappeared in the darkness.  Odo had not seen his face; but though his dress was tattered, and he leaned on a beggar’s staff, something about his broad rolling back recalled the well-filled outline of Cantapresto’s cassock.

Sick at heart, Odo rambled on from one street to another, avoiding the more crowded quarters, and losing himself more than once in the districts near the river, where young gentlemen of his figure seldom showed themselves unattended.  The populace, however, was all abroad, and he passed as unregarded as though his sombre thoughts had enveloped him in actual darkness.

It was late when at length he turned again into the Piazza Castello, which was brightly lit and still thronged with pleasure-seekers.  As he approached, the crowd divided to make way for three or four handsome travelling-carriages, preceded by linkmen and liveried out-riders and followed by a dozen mounted equerries.  The people, evidently in the humour to greet every incident of the streets as part of a show prepared for their diversion, cheered lustily as the carriages dashed across the square; and Odo, turning to a man at his elbow, asked who the distinguished visitors might be.

“Why, sir,” said the other laughing, “I understand it is only an Embassage from some neighbouring state; but when our good people are in their Easter mood they are ready to take a mail-coach for Elijah’s chariot and their wives’ scolding for the Gift of Tongues.”

Odo spent a restless night face to face with his first humiliation.  Though the girl’s rebuff had cut him to the quick, it was the vision of the havoc his folly had wrought that stood between him and sleep.  To have endangered the liberty, the very life, perhaps, of a man he loved and venerated, and who had welcomed him without heed of personal risk, this indeed was bitter to his youthful self-sufficiency.  The thought of Giannone’s fate was like a cold clutch at his heart; nor was there any balm in knowing that it was at Fulvia’s request he had been so freely welcomed; for he was persuaded that, whatever her previous feeling might have been, the scene just enacted must render him forever odious to her.  Turn whither it would, his tossing vanity found no repose; and dawn rose for him on a thorny waste of disillusionment.

Cantapresto broke in early on this vigil, flushed with the importance of a letter from the Countess Valdu.  The lady summoned her son to dinner, “to meet an old friend and distinguished visitor”; and a verbal message bade Odo come early and wear his new uniform.  He was too well acquainted with his mother’s exaggerations to attach much importance to the summons; but being glad of an excuse to escape his daily visit at the Palazzo Tournanches, he sent Donna Laura word that he would wait on her at two.