In twenty-four hours he received a note from her,
written in a delicate tall hand, not without character, on paper
bearing the address of Baron Volterra's house in Via Ludovisi. She
thanked him in few words, warmly and simply. He read the note several
times and then put it away in an old-fashioned brass-bound secretary,
of which he always kept the key in his pocket. It was the only word of
thanks he had received from any living member of the Conti family.
A month had passed since then, but as he sat at his desk it was all as
vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
He was in his office to-day because he had received notice that some
one was coming to look at the palace with a view to buying it, and he
considered it his duty to show it to possible purchasers. Baron
Volterra had sent him word in the morning, and he had come early.
Then, as he sat in his old place, the ruin of the great house had
enacted itself again before his eyes, so vividly that the pain had
been almost physical. And then, he had fallen to thinking of Sabina,
and wondering what was to become of her. That was the history of one
half-hour in his life, on a May afternoon; but the whole man was in
it, what he had been thirty years earlier, and a month ago, what he
was to-day and what he would be to the end of his life.
CHAPTER III
If Sabina had known what was before her when she got into the Baroness
Volterra's carriage and was driven up to the Via Ludovisi, followed by
a cab with her luggage, she would probably have begged leave to go
with her elder sister to the convent.
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