IN ten hours, or at nine o’clock in the morning, Hera, and her maid, the only servant she had brought from the Brianza, entered a cab that had been summoned to the Via Cappuccini gate and drove to the Central railway station. They took a train that started at about the hour that Tarsis, heavy-eyed after a sleepless night, seated himself at the breakfast table and received her eloquently brief note. It was placed in his hand by Beppe, the velvety man-servant who brought the coffee: MY HUSBAND: Your groundless accusations leave me no alternative but to withdraw from your house. It is my purpose to make the separation permanent. I go to my father. HERA DEI BARBIONDI. He read it a second time, then leaned back and flecked the sheet with his fingers in a studied show of cool reflection; but his bitten lip spoiled the effect that he strove to produce. When he looked up Beppe’s eyes were riveted upon him in a manner unheard of for that genius in the art of seeing and hearing nothing. The incident, small in itself, proclaimed loudly enough that the palace retainers, from stable-boy to the head of the kitchen, were feasting already on the delicious scandal. It advised Tarsis as well that before nightfall the fashionable world would have the news on its tongue, thence to fly from the twelve gates of Milan to all parts of Italy. Though contempt for public opinion had marked his career in all else, he had taken a keen pride in standing before the world as the husband of his young and beautiful high-born wife. It was the dearest of all his triumphs because it fed his vanity most. And now he perceived the glare of ridicule into which her desertion must throw him. Oddly enough, it was this realisation that set the first brand to his wrath. He was seized with a wild impulse to follow her to Villa Barbiondi and assert his authority over her--compel her, by main force, if the need should be, to return to the palace. When he rose from the table the servant was not too busy to take notice that he caught up the bit of writing and crushed it in his fist. What step this man of the South would take in the case at hand was a question of absorbing interest to the Northern men and maids of the household. They believed, one and all--and in hushed voices uttered their belief as a black forecast--that the life of some one would be demanded in payment of the bill, and that it would not be the life of their master. Every item of news that could be carried to the kitchen and stables was awaited avidly, and Beppe, there on the spot, knew that many ears yawned for the report of his observations. Tarsis was aware not only that the man’s eyes followed him when he moved from the breakfast room, but that a neck was craned to keep him in view as he made his way across the Atlantean chamber.