"
"Well, what do you conclude from that?"
"That he is a thoroughly wicked man."
"Yet thoroughly wicked men have loved their children.
Look at Rodrigo Borgia, for example."
"I have also seen examples of that in my district."
With this remark the admirable young woman rose, and
returned to keep up her Italian. She puzzled Philip
extremely. He could understand enthusiasm, but she did not
seem the least enthusiastic. He could understand pure
cussedness, but it did not seem to be that either.
Apparently she was deriving neither amusement nor profit
from the struggle. Why, then, had she undertaken it?
Perhaps she was not sincere. Perhaps, on the whole, that
was most likely. She must be professing one thing and
aiming at another. What the other thing could be he did not
stop to consider. Insincerity was becoming his stock
explanation for anything unfamiliar, whether that thing was
a kindly action or a high ideal.
"She fences well," he said to his mother afterwards.
"What had you to fence about?" she said suavely. Her
son might know her tactics, but she refused to admit that he
knew. She still pretended to him that the baby was the one
thing she wanted, and had always wanted, and that Miss
Abbott was her valued ally.
And when, next week, the reply came from Italy, she
showed him no face of triumph. "Read the letters," she
said. "We have failed."
Gino wrote in his own language, but the solicitors had
sent a laborious English translation, where "Preghiatissima
Signora" was rendered as "Most Praiseworthy Madam," and
every delicate compliment and superlative--superlatives are
delicate in Italian--would have felled an ox.
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