"Ah, Madame Lawrence is not here! Then is it true that she is a Jewess, though she won't confess it?"
"No, no, she hurt her foot playing golf yesterday."
Mabel Clarke had entered a minute previously, dressed completely in white, her fresh, youthful face suffused with blushes beneath the white frame of her hat trimmed with cambric, which the dense mass of her hair raised and pressed back a little; she carried a soft bunch of white lilies-of-the-valley in one hand. Her mother is not with her, nor is the faithful shadow of Mrs. Broughton. She is accompanied by Don Vittorio Lante della Scala, who follows her step for step. Dressed in a dark blue suit, almost black, with the single bright and soft note of a pale yellow tie, in his sober smartness the young Italian aristocrat has a virile fascination together with delicacy and grace. As the two advance silently, but calmly and easily, their passage forward raises a murmur that creeps gradually through all the congregation.
Mabel Clarke, who is almost always used to hearing these whisperings on her passage, does not turn and has the appearance of not noticing them. Don Vittorio Lante seems to neither hear nor see, being intent on every action of the American girl he is accompanying. Mabel greets her American friends with a slight wave of the hand and a delightful smile, and reaching the top of the church looks for a place behind the two Archduchesses.
With difficulty she obtains a seat, and kneels for a moment. Vittorio Lante places himself most faithfully beside her, and they are shoulder to shoulder. While the priest at the altar makes the first genuflexion and whispers the first prayers, Mabel and Vittorio, bowing their heads to one another, carry on a conversation in a slight whisper.
All the crowd in the church is inattentive and distracted. Scarcely anyone follows the movements and acts of the priest at the altar. Many men and women raise themselves a little in their seats to watch the erect, proud, silent heads of the two Archduchesses. Others, the men especially, keep pointing at Mabel Clarke, who, smiling, distrait, and detached, turns her large grey eyes to those of Vittorio Lante, while he, with eyes fixed on her, distracted, seized, conquered, tells her things very softly, without ceasing to look and smile at her.