He waited a long time, pacing slowly the broad flagstones beneath the arch of the palace, while the porter himself went up with his card and message.

The fellow had hesitated, but Don Giovanni Saracinesca was not a man to be refused by a servant.

At last the porter returned, and, bowing to the ground, said that the Signora Duchessa would receive him.
In five minutes he was waiting alone in the great drawing-room.

It had cost Corona a struggle to allow him to be admitted.

She hesitated long, for it seemed like a positive wrong to her husband's memory, but the woman in her yielded at last; she was going away on the following morning, and she could not refuse to see him for once.