As for Marcantonio, she should be very glad when he came back. It seemed to her that he must be much more amusing now, and that she could say things to rouse him and make him talk. She wrote affectionate notes every day, telling him how beautiful everything was, and how he was to enjoy it, now that the first difficulties of settling were over. She even said she had sent for the cook, and had ascertained that he was very well, having had no return of the fever; she thought it must please her husband to know that she was taking care of the household and looking after the people.
In the meanwhile Batiscombe fell in love, studiously consoling his conscience with the reflection that he was doing a good deed, and was acting the part of a friend in making the time pass pleasantly for Leonora in her solitude. But his conscience did not trouble him greatly, though it would be sure to, by and by. At present everything was swamped in a sea of glorious enjoyment, and he was no less really happy than Leonora. Day after day began and ended alike, but yet ever different. They never referred to the singularity of the arrangement by which Julius came every day in the morning and stayed till dark. There seemed no reason why they should not leave well alone, and enjoy each other's society to the very utmost. And they did, most fully, each wholly engrossed in the other.
At the end of a week Marcantonio telegraphed that he and his sister would leave Rome by the night train and arrive in the morning. Leonora in the innocence of her heart was glad, anticipating all manner of new pleasure in her husband's society, the result of her own cure from morbid ennui. But Batiscombe felt his heart sink within him.
The sun beat down fiercely as Marcantonio and Madame de Charleroi drove up to the house at half-past ten o'clock. They had travelled all night, but the beautiful Diana was not the less fair for being a little tired, and as she descended from the carriage and went up the short steps to the door, Leonora could not help admiring the perfect smoothness and completeness of her appearance. Donna Diana did things in a stately fashion, and it would have been a hard journey indeed that could ruffle her lace or disturb the smooth coiling of her hair. Leonora herself was apt to arrive a little dusty from a night in a train, and not altogether serene, and she knew it; so that the absolutely finished completeness of Madame de Charleroi struck her as enviable and much to be admired.