Signor Giuseppe seemed to forget that he also ought to be going in, that dinner--imperious dinner--would be ready immediately at the small house as well as at the great one. And Fulvia, though she knew full well that nothing so much exasperated her husband as waiting for this function, and though she made it her study not to cross him in things of that kind--Fulvia also betrayed no haste. Her face changed and grew softer. Signor Giuseppe was looking very earnestly, yea, even wistfully, at her. She did not return his glance. On the contrary, her eyes were downcast--it almost appeared as if she had not the courage to meet his gaze. ‘I will go with you to the Hall, if I may,’ he said. ‘It will give me the greatest pleasure if you will,’ was her low-voiced response, and they moved on. But there was no haste in her step now. Signor Oriole, though no weakling, was now an old man, and his griefs and troubles had added to the years which by nature were his. No doubt he would have walked quickly, and hastened, had she shown herself in a hurry. But she did not. She waited till she found out his pace, and then accommodated herself to it. She was silent, but still her eyes were downcast, and Fulvia Marchmont, in the flush of her womanhood and in all her glorious beauty, with that expression of greater softness relaxing its usual smiling, cold composure, was as lovely a thing as man or woman could wish to look upon, be the same father or mother, lover, husband or friend. ‘You are glad to be here, near Mrs. Hastings?’ he asked her. They spoke Italian. ‘As glad as I can be of anything,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘I can look forward to the summer now with peace, at any rate. And it is better to be here in this quiet English country place than in some German bath or French watering-place, or----’ ‘Or even some nook in Italian hills,’ he continued for her. ‘Yes, the two first would be a weariness, with their endless monotony of fashions, and bands, and entertainments; and the last----’ ‘And the last--Frascati, for instance, or further afield: Olevano, or Subiaco, or Rocco di Papa. Olevano--would not Olevano Romano please you now?’ Signor Giuseppe, though speaking quietly, had forgotten himself and his great self-restraint. He had forgotten the stately _voi_, and had called her ‘thee’ in a tone which seemed to stir some feeling at her inmost heart--who should say what feeling, what recollection of her childish days at Casa Dietrich, when she had hung on his arm, and teased him, and called him Beppo, and said ‘Cattivo!’ when he would not indulge her in some whim? She became very white, and looked at him speechlessly for a moment from a pair of wide-open, dry eyes, full of a pain that stabbed his own heart. ‘Don’t!’ was all she said, but humbly, deprecatingly, not sharply.