With but a few minutes' delay Veranilda
descended to the room which lay behind the atrium. Marcian,
loitering among the ivied plane-trees without, was told of her
coming, and at once entered.
She was alone, standing at the back of the room; her hands hanging
linked before her, the lower part of the arms white against the
folds of a russet-coloured tunic. And Marcian beheld her face.
He took a few rapid steps toward her, checked himself, bowed
profoundly, and said in a somewhat abrupt voice:
'Gracious lady, is it by your own wish that you are unattended? Or
have my women, by long disuse, so forgotten their duties--'
Veranilda interrupted him.
'I assure you it was my own wish, lord Marcian. We must speak of
things which are not for others' hearing.'
In the same unnatural voice, as though he put constraint upon
himself for the performance of a disagreeable duty, he begged her to
be seated, and Veranilda, not without betraying a slight trouble of
surprise, took the chair to which he pointed. But he himself did not
sit down. In the middle of the room stood a great bronze
candelabrum, many-branched for the suspension of lamps, at its base
three figures, Pluto, Neptune, and Proserpine.
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