Читать книгу The Temptress (La tierra de todos) онлайн

44 страница из 108

No sooner had the Countess learned from Elena’s own lips, that Robledo was a millionaire fresh from the American wild, than she began casting glances of passionate interest in his direction. Teacup in hand, she captured him in a corner, and began a conversation to escape from which he frantically sought a pretext.

“You, who are such a traveller, such a hero, must give me the benefit of your experience. Tell me, what is your real opinion about love?”

The poetess heard the hero murmuring excuses. In spite of the tender glances of her miopic eyes, she had frightened him!

A few weeks later Elena asked him to accept an invitation to a reception at the Countess’s. “It will be amusing. Titonius is sure to ask her Bohemian friends, so as to have some applause for her poems—of course she’ll read them! There’ll be a lot of people there who come in the hope of meeting celebrities, and there’ll be no-account artists, and youths convinced that they have achieved immortality because they’ve succeeded in collecting a train of admirers, or get their things published in the columns of some wretched little sheet that nobody reads. You ought to see all those absurd people! There isn’t another house like that one in Paris. Anyway I promised the Countess that you would come and I’ll be cross if you don’t!”