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It was unbearably hot. And that visit to Mrs. Meadows had
also troubled him a little.
The Old Town looked different on this occasion. A sullen death-like
stillness, a menacing stagnation, hung about those pink houses. Not a
leaf was astir under the burning sirocco sky. Even old Caterina, when
he saw her, seemed to be afflicted, somehow.
"SOFFRE, LA SIGNORA," she said. The lady was suffering.
The bishop would not have recognized his cousin after all those years;
not if he had met her in the street at least. She greeted him
affectionately and they talked for a long time of family matters. It
was true, then. Her husband's leave had been again postponed. Perhaps
she would travel back to England with him, and there await the arrival
of Meadows. She would let him know definitely in a day or two.
He watched her carefully while she conversed, trying to reconstruct,
out of that woman's face, the childish features he dimly remembered.
They were effaced. He could see what Keith had meant when he described
her as "tailor-made.


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