“As long as seems necessary to you,” she replied, with a little uncertain smile.
“Well, ten days or a fortnight. To which hotel would you like to go?”
She started at this question, and lowered her eyes.
“Is it all the same to you perhaps? If it is----”
“It isn’t all the same to me,” she murmured, with an evident control of her will. “I should like to go to a new hotel where you have never been.”
Her face grew pale for having once dared to tell her secret thought; then she blushed, and tears came to her eyes.
“If it is only that,” said Marco slowly, moved, “if it is only that, it is easy. We will go to the Elysèe Palace.”
She dared not press his hand because they were in the large hall of the Hôtel Milan, among a crowd of travellers coming and going, where every one gave a glance to the handsome couple, above all to the blonde, with her pale complexion and attractive beauty.
“And at Paris, what life do you intend to lead, Vittorietta?”
“Ah, that I don’t know,” she added serenely; “I have always heard from my childhood of this fascinating and terrible place; but no one ever told me anything exactly about it. You know they leave us girls very ignorant in Rome, and you must find me so stupid sometimes, Marco.”
“Well, in a few sentences I am going to tell how to live in two ways in Paris for ten days or a fortnight. You know that we have relations and friends there, and quite well that our marriage has been announced in the _Figaro_ and _Gaulois_, in fact that every one knows that we are coming to Paris. Bear in mind the gravity of what I am telling you, Vittoria,” he interrupted in emphatic tones.
“I understand deeply,” she replied smilingly, backing him up.
“There is more. At Paris there is my Great Aunt, the Aunt of all the Fiore, the Great Aunt of the family, whom we have respected and venerated ever since we were born, the Duchess of Altomonte, the legitimist, who has been exiled from Italy for forty years; a _femme terrible_, with whom they used to frighten us at night, when we were small and could not sleep.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Vittoria, smiling.
“Very well, dear Vittoria, also flower of flowers, as the poet of Spello said at our wedding, there is the first method of life at Paris. It is that of arriving officially, of making a request to the Duchess of Altomonte to be permitted to kiss her hand, if not her foot; to warn all the other minor aunts, cousins, and friends; to accept all the invitations to lunch, dinner and tea, to the theatre and to supper; every day to have three luncheons and two dinners, three theatres and two suppers; to have no more peace or liberty, not to be able to speak to each other for a minute, falling asleep at night, and the next minute it is morning with the oppression of all the worldly fatigues of the day.