"Ah!" he cried, "good-evening, my friends. You have been taking a little air. Eh? I imagined that you were all asleep."
Madame de Charleroi smiled serenely at her brother. She knew it was an accident, and that he had a habit of forgetting things and coming to look for them. She said it had been hot all day, and she and Monsieur Batiscombe had been enjoying the coolness of the terrace. Julius bowed blandly and said good-night. But he suspected Marcantonio of having come to watch his sister. They passed on, and Marcantonio stood for a moment looking after them as they went out into the hall, where lights were still burning. He shrugged his shoulders.
"Eh!" he exclaimed aloud to himself, in Italian, "I do not understand anything about it--ma proprio niente." And he continued his search for the missing letter, pondering deeply.
Batiscombe spent a sleepless night, which was very unusual with him. The interview with Diana had made a deep impression on him at the time. He knew that whenever she was at hand to exert her influence he should succumb to it. But as the night wore on, the strength of the impression diminished, and the old feeling of obstinate defiance gradually returned. At all events, he thought, he would show her that her suspicions were empty, and that nothing--no harm, at least--could come of his intimacy with Leonora. He would also be sure that if Diana interrupted another interview it could hardly be by accident. Such accidents did not occur every day. In the early dawn he rose and went down in his slippers to the sea, and bathed in the cool salt water, and smoked a cigarette on the rocks, and another in the archway where the scene of the previous afternoon had occurred. Then he went up to the house and walked round it, and surveyed the various angles, and terraces, and balconies, and eccentricities of patchwork architecture that made up the dwelling. Suddenly he stopped as though an idea had struck him.
Houses in the south have often as many as five or six broad terraces, of various sizes and at various elevations, built from time to time to suit the taste and convenience of the owners. The strong brown vines grow up leafless from the ground till they reach the trellis, and then spread out into luxuriant foliage and a multiplicity of rich fruit-bearing branches, making a thick shade, into which even the noonday sun finds it hard to penetrate. Julius had just observed that there was a large terrace of this kind which he had not yet noticed, having been but a very few days at liberty to wander alone about the place. It was as high as the first floor, and on the side toward Castellamare, facing the sea. He had been in Marcantonio's room, and knew that it did not open upon this terrace, and Leonora's apartment was on the other side of the house. Obviously this balcony belonged to Madame de Charleroi's rooms, or was attached to some vacant part of the building. It struck him that if it were vacant, it would be a very agreeable spot in which to pass the afternoon. He thought he might mention it to Leonora that morning, and find out if it were available, since their retreat in the rocks had been invaded. It had the advantage of being large, so that people seated upon it could not be seen from below, and the thick vines would prevent their being seen from above.