Sperelli bowed and passed on, feeling strangely embarrassed by
Albonico's excessive friendliness. A suspicion crossed his mind that he
was grateful to him for having provoked a quarrel with his wife's lover,
and the cowardice of the man brought a supercilious smile to his lips.
Returning from the races on the Prince di Ferentino's mail coach, he
espied Giannetto Rutolo tearing back to Rome in a little two-wheeled
trap behind a great fast-trotting roan; bending forward with head down,
a cigar between his teeth and utterly regardless of the injunctions of
the police to keep in the line. Rome rose up before them, black against
a band of saffron light, and in the violet sky above that light the
statues on the Basilica of San Giovanni stood out exaggeratedly large.
And Andrea then fully realised the pain he was inflicting on this man's
soul.
CHAPTER X
At the Palazzo Giustiniani that evening, Andrea said to Ippolita
Albonico, 'Well then, it is a fixed thing that I expect you to-morrow
between two and five?'
She would like to have said: 'Then you are not going to fight
to-morrow?' but she did not dare.
'I have promised,' she replied.
A minute or two afterwards, her husband came up to Andrea and taking his
arm with much effusion, began asking particulars about the duel. He was
a youngish man, slim, with very thin fair hair and colourless eyes and
projecting teeth.
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