"Strange!" Lavinia spoke with innocent eyes.
It was like turning a knife in her wound to agree apparently with Cesare Orsi--rather, she wanted to laugh at him coldly and leave him standing alone; but she must cultivate her defenses. There was, too, a sort of negative pleasure in misleading the banker, a sort of torment not unlike that enjoyed by the early martyrs.
Cesare Orsi regarded her with new interest and approbation.
"You're a sensible girl," he proclaimed; "and extremely pretty in the bargain." He added this in an accent of profound surprise, as if she had suddenly grown presentable under his eyes. "In some ways," he went on, gathering conviction, "you are as handsome as Gheta."
"Thank you, Signor Orsi," Lavinia responded with every indication of a modesty, which, in fact, was the indifference of a supreme contempt.
"I have been blind," he asseverated, vivaciously gesticulating with his thick hands.
Lavinia studied him with a remote young brutality, from his fluffy disarranged hair, adhering to his wet brow, to his extravagantly pointed shoes. The ridiculous coral charm hanging from his heavy watch chain, a violent green handkerchief, an insufferable cameo pin--all contributed pleasurably to the lowering of her opinion of him.
"I must find Gheta," she pronounced, suddenly aware of her isolation with Cesare Orsi in the crowd, and of curious glances. Orsi immediately took her arm, but she eluded him. "Go first, please; we can get through sooner that way."
They progressed from room to room, thoroughly exploring the dense throng about the auctioneer, but without finding either Gheta, Anna Mantegazza or the bull-fighter.
"I can't think how she could have forgotten me!" Lavinia declared with increasing annoyance. "It's clear that they have all gone."
"Don't agitate yourself," Cesare Orsi begged. "Sanviano will be absolutely contented to have you in my care. I am delighted. You shall go home directly in my carriage." He conducted her, with a show of form that in any one else or at another time she would have enjoyed hugely, to the street, where he handed her into an immaculately glossy and corded victoria, drawn by a big stamping bay, and stood with his hat off until she had rolled away.