owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with
friends whom absence has not taught me to forget." He smiled again at
Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.

The curiosity which Trescorre's words excited was lost to Odo in the
painful impression produced by his mother's agitation. To see her, a
woman already past her youth, and aged by her very efforts to preserve
it, trembling and bridling under the cool eye of masculine indifference,
was a spectacle the more humiliating that he was too young to be moved
by its human and pathetic side. He recalled once seeing a memento mori
of delicately-tinted ivory, which represented a girl's head, one side
all dewy freshness, the other touched with death; and it seemed to him
that his mother's face resembled this tragic toy, the side her mirror
reflected being still rosy with youth, while that which others saw was
already a ruin. His heart burned with disgust as he followed Donna Laura
and Trescorre into the dining-room, which had been set out with all the
family plate, and decked with rare fruits and flowers. The Countess had
excused her husband on the plea of his official duties, and the three
sat down alone to a meal composed of the costliest delicacies.

Their guest, who ate little and drank less, entertained them with the
latest news of Pianura, touching discreetly on the growing estrangement
between the Duke and Duchess, and speaking with becoming gravity of the
heir's weak health. It was clear that the speaker, without filling an
official position at the court, was already deep in the Duke's counsels,
and perhaps also in the Duchess's; and Odo guessed under his smiling
indiscretions the cool aim of the man who never wastes a shot.

Toward the close of the meal, when the servants had withdrawn, he turned
to Odo with a graver manner. "You have perhaps guessed, cavaliere," he