Part 32 (1/2)
PART II.--_Continued._ GLORIA DALRYMPLE 1
PART III.
DONNA FRANCESCA CAMPODONICO 227
LIST OF ILl.u.s.tRATIONS.
VOL. II.
PAGE ”Gloria--forgive me!” 50
Stefanone and Gloria 100
”The horror of poverty smote him” 123
”Let us not speak of the dead” 203
”The last great, true note died away” 219
”As he stood there repeating the name” 331
Part II.--_Continued._
_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
CASA BRACCIO.
PART II.--_Continued._
_GLORIA DALRYMPLE._
CHAPTER XXIV.
DURING the first few months of their marriage Reanda and Gloria believed themselves happy, and really were, since there is no true criterion of man's happiness but his own belief in it. They took a small furnished apartment at the corner of the Macel de' Corvi, with an iron balcony overlooking the Forum of Trajan. They would have had no difficulty in obtaining other rooms adjoining the two Reanda had so long occupied in the Palazzetto Borgia, but Gloria was opposed to the arrangement, and Reanda did not insist upon it. The Forum of Trajan was within a convenient distance of the palace, and he went daily to his work.
”Besides,” said Gloria, ”you will not always be painting frescoes for Donna Francesca. I want you to paint a great picture, and send it to Paris and get a medal.”
She was ambitious for him, and dreamed of his winning world-wide fame.
She loved him, and she felt that Francesca had caged him, as Francesca herself had once felt. She wished to remove him altogether from the latter's influence, both because she was frankly jealous of his friends.h.i.+p for the older woman, and wished to have him quite to herself, and also in the belief that he could do greater things if he were altogether freed from the task of decorating the palace, which had kept him far too long in one limited sequence of production. There was, moreover, a selfish consideration of vanity in her view, closely linked with her unbounded admiration for her husband. She knew that she was beautiful, and she wished his greatest work to be a painting of herself.
Gloria, however, wished also to take a position in Roman society, and the only person who could help her and her husband to cross the line was Francesca Campodonico. It was therefore impossible for Gloria to break up the intimacy altogether, however much she might wish to do so.
Meanwhile, too, Reanda had not finished his frescoes.
Soon after the marriage, which took place in the summer, Dalrymple left Rome, intending to be absent but a few months in Scotland, where his presence was necessary on account of certain family affairs and arrangements consequent upon the death of Lord Redin, the head of his branch of the Dalrymples, and of Lord Redin's son only a few weeks later, whereby the t.i.tle went to an aged great-uncle of Angus Dalrymple's, who was unmarried, so that Dalrymple's only brother became the next heir.