...
"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage
towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.
With a start--as of one taken red-handed--Mary awoke from her dream.
XX
Madame d'Estrees and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the
mezzanin of
the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the
Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth
century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But
the
entresol on the eastern side of the
cortile was in good
condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the
Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an
ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured
and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use
or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrees--whose
acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel--and was now keeping her
like a caged canary that sings for its food.
Madame d'Estrees was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which
to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes,
breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most
harmless and engaging of mortals.
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