There was
never the least scandal, only wild curiosity. Now she has cut the whole
thing. Apparently couldn't stand the empty sort of life, or else he did
something worse than usual, at which she drew the line."
Angela did not much care whether people in Rome knew the truth or not.
That no longer greatly mattered to her, because she meant never, never to
go back to Rome, or to see Paolo di Sereno, or any of his friends--who had
never really been her friends. But she did not want people on the ship to
know, because she was tired of being talked about, and her hope was to
begin a new and different life. For herself, she had nothing to conceal;
but, she had never felt any pride or pleasure in being a princess, and
after the flatteries and disillusions, the miseries and foolish
extravagances of the last hateful, brilliant six years, everything
connected with them, and the historic title her dead father's money had
bought, was being eagerly obliterated by Franklin Merriam's daughter. She
knew little about her forebears on her father's side, except that they
were English, whereas Paolo had centuries behind him crammed full of
glorious ancestors whose deeds were celebrated on tapestries of great
beauty and value. Her one tolerable memory of Paolo was that he had never
touched her hand since their marriage; but the memory of her father was
sacred.
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