| Page 125 A WOMAN OF FIFTY impatient with him; they appeared to have a great
deal to say to one another, but he got the impression that he was
being edged out of their conversation, as though he were a child
who was expected to sit still and not interrupt while his elders
talked of things over his head; he had a notion that often his
presence was unwelcome to them and that they were more at their
ease when he was not there. He knew his father, and his reputation,
but the suspicion that arose in him was so horrible that he refused
to entertain it. And yet sometimes he caught a look passing between
them that disconcerted him, there was a tender possessiveness in
his father's eyes, a sensual complacency in Laura's, which, if
he had seen it in others, would have convinced him that they were
lovers. But he couldn't, he wouldn't, believe that there was anything
between them. The count couldn't help making love to a woman and
it was likely enough that Laura felt his extraordinary fascination,
but it was shameful to suppose for a moment that they, these two
people he loved, had formed a criminal, almost an incestuous, connection.
He was sure that Laura had no idea that there was anything more
in her feeling than the natural affection of a young, happily-married
woman for her father-in-law. Notwithstanding he thought it better
that she should not remain in everyday contact with his father,
and one day he suggested that they should go back to live in Florence.
Laura and the count were astonished that he should propose such
a thing and would not hear of it. Laura said that, having spent
so much money on the villa, she couldn't afford to set up another
establishment, and the count that it was absurd to leave it, now
that Laura had made it so comfortable, to live in a wretched apartment
in the city. An argument started and Tito got rather excited. He
took some remark of Laura's to mean that if she lived at the villa
it was to keep him out of temptation. This reference to his losses
at the poker-table angered him. |
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