Trescorre bowed.  “I am glad to hear it,” he said, “for I know that a man of your age and appearance may have other inclinations than his own to consider.  Indeed, I have had reports of a connection that I should not take the liberty of mentioning, were it not that your interest demands it.”  He waited a moment, but Odo remained silent.  “I am sure,” he went on, “you will do me the justice of believing that I mean no reflection on the lady, when I warn you against being seen too often in the quarter behind the Corpus Domini.  Such attachments, though engaging at the outset to a fastidious taste, are often more troublesome than a young man of your age can foresee; and in this case the situation is complicated by the fact that the girl’s father is in ill odour with the authorities, so that, should the motive of your visits be mistaken, you might find yourself inconveniently involved in the proceedings of the Holy Office.”

Odo, who had turned pale, controlled himself sufficiently to listen in silence, and with as much pretence of indifference as he could assume.  It was the peculiar misery of his situation that he could not defend Fulvia without betraying her father, and that of the two alternatives prudence bade him reject the one that chivalry would have chosen.  It flashed across him, however, that he might in some degree repair the harm he had done by finding out what measures were to be taken against Vivaldi; and to this end he carelessly asked:—­“Is it possible that the Professor has done anything to give offence in such quarters?”

His assumption of carelessness was perhaps overdone; for Trescorre’s face grew as blank as a shuttered house-front.

“I have heard rumours of the kind,” he rejoined; “but they would scarcely have attracted my notice had I not learned of your honouring the young lady with your favours.”  He glanced at Odo with a smile.  “Were I a father,” he added, “with a son of your age, my first advice to him would be to form no sentimental ties but in his own society or in the world of pleasure—­the only two classes where the rules of the game are understood.”

2.6.

Odo had appointed to leave Turin some two weeks after Trescorre’s departure; but the preparations for a young gentleman’s travels were in those days a momentous business, and one not to be discharged without vexatious postponements.  The travelling-carriage must be purchased and fitted out, the gold-mounted dressing-case selected and engraved with the owner’s arms, servants engaged and provided with liveries, and the noble tourist’s own wardrobe stocked with an assortment of costumes suited to the vicissitudes of travel and the requirements of court life.

Odo’s impatience to be gone increased with every delay, and at length he determined to go forward at all adventure, leaving Cantapresto to conclude the preparations and overtake him later.  It had been agreed with Trescorre that Odo, on his way to Pianura, should visit his grandfather, the old Marquess, whose increasing infirmities had for some years past imprisoned him on his estates, and accordingly about the Ascension he set out in the saddle for Donnaz, attended only by one servant, and having appointed that Cantapresto should meet him with the carriage at Ivrea.