"Well, that's only fair if he has taken her away from her home."
"You may look at things that way, dear Madonna, but society won't.
I think most people will very much resent being introduced to a woman whom they know to be his mistress."
"How can they know it unless he tells them so?"
"It's plain enough; you'll see if you meet her.
But I should think even he would not have the audacity to bring her to the Grassinis'."
"They wouldn't receive her.
Signora Grassini is not the woman to do unconventional things of that kind.
But I wanted to hear about Signor Rivarez as a satirist, not as a man.
Fabrizi told me he had been written to and had consented to come and take up the campaign against the Jesuits; and that is the last I have heard.
There has been such a rush of work this week."
"I don't know that I can tell you much more.
There doesn't seem to have been any difficulty over the money question, as we feared there would be.
He's well off, it appears, and willing to work for nothing."
"Has he a private fortune, then?"
"Apparently he has; though it seems rather odd--you heard that night at Fabrizi's about the state the Duprez expedition found him in.
But he has got shares in mines somewhere out in Brazil; and then he has been immensely successful as a feuilleton writer in Paris and Vienna and London.
He seems to have half a dozen languages at his finger-tips; and there's nothing to prevent his keeping up his newspaper connections from here.
Slanging the Jesuits won't take all his time."
"That's true, of course. It's time to start, Cesare.
Yes, I will wear the roses.
Wait just a minute."
She ran upstairs, and came back with the roses in the bosom of her dress, and a long scarf of black Spanish lace thrown over her head.
Martini surveyed her with artistic approval.
"You look like a queen, Madonna mia; like the great and wise Queen of Sheba."
"What an unkind speech!" she retorted, laughing; "when you know how hard I've been trying to mould myself into the image of the typical society lady!
Who wants a conspirator to look like the Queen of Sheba?
That's not the way to keep clear of spies."
"You'll never be able to personate the stupid society woman if you try for ever.
But it doesn't matter, after all; you're too fair to look upon for spies to guess your opinions, even though you can't simper and hide behind your fan like Signora Grassini."
"Now Cesare, let that poor woman alone!
There, take some more barley-sugar to sweeten your temper. Are you ready?
Then we had better start."
Martini had been quite right in saying that the conversazione would be both crowded and dull.
The literary men talked polite small-talk and looked hopelessly bored, while the "nondescript crowd of tourists and Russian princes" fluttered up and down the rooms, asking each other who were the various celebrities and trying to carry on intellectual conversation.
Grassini was receiving his guests with a manner as carefully polished as his boots; but his cold face lighted up at the sight of Gemma.
He did not really like her and indeed was secretly a little afraid of her; but he realized that without her his drawing room would lack a great attraction.
He had risen high in his profession, and now that he was rich and well known his chief ambition was to make of his house a centre of liberal and intellectual society.
He was painfully conscious that the insignificant, overdressed little woman whom in his youth he had made the mistake of marrying was not fit, with her vapid talk and faded prettiness, to be the mistress of a great literary salon.
When he could prevail upon Gemma to come he always felt that the evening would be a success.
Her quiet graciousness of manner set the guests at their ease, and her very presence seemed to lay the spectre of vulgarity which always, in his imagination, haunted the house.
Signora Grassini greeted Gemma affectionately, exclaiming in a loud whisper:
"How charming you look to-night!" and examining the white cashmere with viciously critical eyes.
She hated her visitor rancourously, for the very things for which Martini loved her; for her quiet strength of character; for her grave, sincere directness; for the steady balance of her mind; for the very expression of her face.
And when Signora Grassini hated a woman, she showed it by effusive tenderness.
Gemma took the compliments and endearments for what they were worth, and troubled her head no more about them.
What is called "going into society" was in her eyes one of the wearisome and rather unpleasant tasks which a conspirator who wishes not to attract the notice of spies must conscientiously fulfil.
She classed it together with the laborious work of writing in cipher; and, knowing how valuable a practical safeguard against suspicion is the reputation of being a well-dressed woman, studied the fashion-plates as carefully as she did the keys of her ciphers.
The bored and melancholy literary lions brightened up a little at the sound of Gemma's name; she was very popular among them; and the radical journalists, especially, gravitated at once to her end of the long room.
But she was far too practised a conspirator to let them monopolize her.