The Count Rosso alone
remained with the hostess. "Come, Fava, don't be so headstrong--you're
spoiling the party."
"Spoiling the party! Do you hear the noise they are making? Is that the
way to conduct one's self in a lady's house--I said a lady's house! Why
do you look at me like that? Am I not a lady just as much as that
daughter of an Indian squaw from over the Atlantic? Those in there"--she
pointed with her thumb toward the dining-room--"they would not behave so
in the Palazzo Sansevero!" Then, without another word, she followed
where she had pointed, so fast that her thin draperies fluttered behind
the lithe lines of her figure like butterfly wings. On the threshold of
the dining-room she paused, like the bad fairy at the christening.
"Why should you think you can behave in my house as you would not behave
in the house of a princess?"
The count, who had followed her, seemed relieved that she mentioned no
specific name. Her remark seemed to touch a chord of sympathy in the
company, for the women, especially, became very quiet. Favorita sat down
at the end of the table between the manager and an empty place.
"Eat something, my girl!" he said to her. "It will be the best thing you
can do!"
"My need is not the same as yours--I have emptiness of heart."
Her alert hearing caught a footfall, and she was looking eagerly at the
door when Giovanni Sansevero entered.
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