She overheard them, and listened with dry lips and a beating heart.
Why did he write to no one? The news-sheets had announced that he had left Palermo for Floralia.
"He may be coming back by the marshes," someone else suggested; "he is reclaiming land there."
Perhaps he stayed away, she thought, because he had heard that she still remained in his native city.
It was mid-April. Madame Mila was organising picnics under old Etruscan walls, and alfresco dinners in villa gardens, and she and her kind were driving out on the tops of drags, and playing baccarat upon anemone-studded lawns by moonlight, and driving in again, at or after midnight, singing Offenbach choruses, and going to the big Café in the town for supper and champagnes; be it in winter or summer, spring or autumn, town or country, youth or middle-age, Madame Mila and her kind, contrive to make no difference in their manner of life whatever; they would sing Schneider's songs in the Tombs of the
