Old Marietta--the bravest of small figures, in her neat
black-and-white peasant dress, with her silver ornaments,
and her red silk coif and apron--came for the coffee things.
But at sight of Peter, she abruptly halted. She struck an
attitude of alarm. She fixed him with her fiery little black
eyes.
"The Signorino is not well!" she cried, in the tones of one
launching a denunciation.
Peter roused himself.
"Er--yes--I 'm pretty well, thank you," he reassured her. "I
--I 'm only dying," he added, sweetly, after an instant's
hesitation.
"Dying--!" echoed Marietta, wild, aghast.
"Ah, but you can save my life--you come in the very nick of
time," he said. "I'm dying of curiosity--dying to know
something that you can tell me."
Her stare dissolved, her attitude relaxed. She smiled--relief,
rebuke. She shook her finger at him.
"Ah, the Signorino gave me a fine fright," she said.
"A thousand regrets," said Peter. "Now be a succouring angel,
and make a clean breast of it. Who is my landlady?"
Marietta drew back a little. Her brown old visage wrinkled up,
perplexed.
"Who is the Signorino's landlady?" she repeated.
"Ang," said he, imitating the characteristic nasalised eh of
Italian affirmation, and accompanying it by the characteristic
Italian jerk of the head.
Marietta eyed him, still perplexed--even (one might have
fancied) a bit suspicious.
"But is it not in the Signorino's lease?" she asked, with
caution.
"Of course it is," said he. "That's just the point. Who is
she?"
"But if it is in your lease!" she expostulated.
"All the more reason why you should make no secret of it," he
argued plausibly. "Come! Out with it! Who is my landlady?"
Marietta exchanged a glance with heaven.
"The Signorino's landlady is the Duchessa di Santangiolo," she
answered, in accents of resignation.
But then the name seemed to stimulate her; and she went on "She
lives there--at Castel Ventirose." Marietta pointed towards
the castle. "She owns all, all this country, all these houses
--all, all." Marietta joined her brown old hands together, and
separated them, like a swimmer, in a gesture that swept the
horizon. Her eyes snapped.
"All Lombardy?" said Peter, without emotion.
Marietta stared again.
"All Lombardy? Mache!" was her scornful remonstrance. "Nobody
owns all Lombardy. All these lands, these houses."
"Who is she?" Peter asked.
Marietta's eyes blinked, in stupefaction before such stupidity.