She felt very ill, as very vain people often do when they feel that they have been made ridiculous.

She lay upon the sofa in her little boudoir, where everything was in the worst possible taste--from the gaudy velvet carpet and satin furniture to the gilt clock on the chimney-piece--and she turned red and pale and red again, and wished she were dead, or in Paris, or anywhere save in Rome.

If she went out she might meet one of the Saracinesca at any turn of the street, or even Corona herself.

How they would bow and smile sweetly at her, enjoying her discomfiture with the polite superiority of people who cannot be hurt! And she herself--she could not tell what she should do.

She had announced her engagement to Del Ferice, but she could not marry him.