'Perhaps you have not been informed of what happened after you
left Venice?' Agnes ventured to add. 'Ferrari left the palace secretly;
and he has never been heard of since.'
Mrs. Rolland mysteriously closed her eyes--as if to exclude some vision
of the lost courier which was of a nature to disturb a respectable woman.
'Nothing that Mr. Ferrari could do would surprise me,' she replied
in her deepest bass tones.
'You speak rather harshly of him,' said Agnes.
Mrs. Rolland suddenly opened her eyes again. 'I speak harshly
of nobody without reason,' she said. 'Mr. Ferrari behaved to me,
Miss Lockwood, as no man living has ever behaved--before or since.'
'What did he do?'
Mrs. Rolland answered, with a stony stare of horror:--
'He took liberties with me.'
Young Lady Montbarry suddenly turned aside, and put her handkerchief
over her mouth in convulsions of suppressed laughter.
Mrs. Rolland went on, with a grim enjoyment of the bewilderment
which her reply had produced in Agnes: 'And when I insisted
on an apology, Miss, he had the audacity to say that the life
at the palace was dull, and he didn't know how else to amuse himself!'
'I am afraid I have hardly made myself understood,' said Agnes.
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