It was a surprisingly jolly garden, true enough. But though
Peter remained in it all day long--though he haunted the
riverside, and cast a million desirous glances, between the
trees, and up the lawns, towards Castel Ventirose--he enjoyed
no briefest vision of the Duchessa di Santangiolo.
Nor the next day; nor the next.
"Why does n't that old dowager ever come down and look after
her river?" he asked Marietta. "For all the attention she
gives it, the water might be undermining her property on both
sides."
"That old dowager--?" repeated Marietta, blank.
"That old widow woman--my landlady--the Duchessa Vedova di
Santangiolo."
"She is not very old--only twenty-six, twenty-seven," said
Marietta.
"Don't try to persuade me that she is n't old enough to know
better," retorted Peter, sternly.
"But she has her guards, her keepers, to look after her
property," said Marietta.
"Guards and keepers are mere mercenaries. If you want a thing
well done, you should do it yourself," said Peter, with gloomy
sententiousness.
On Sunday he went to the little grey rococo parish church.
There were two Masses, one at eight o'clock, one at ten--and
the church was quite a mile from Villa Floriano, and up a hill;
and the Italian sun was hot--but the devoted young man went to
both.
The Duchessa was at neither.
"What does she think will become of her immortal soul?" he
asked Marietta.
On Monday he went to the pink-stuccoed village post-office.
Before the post-office door a smart little victoria, with a
pair of sprightly, fine-limbed French bays, was drawn up, ducal
coronets emblazoned on its panels.
Peter's heart began to beat.
And while he was hesitating on the doorstep, the door opened,
and the Duchessa came forth--tall, sumptuous, in white, with
a wonderful black-plumed hat, and a wonderful white-frilled
sunshade. She was followed by a young girl--a pretty,
dark-complexioned girl, of fourteen, fifteen perhaps, with
pleasant brown eyes (that lucent Italian brown), and in her
cheeks a pleasant hint of red (that covert Italian red, which
seems to glow through the thinnest film of satin).
Peter bowed, standing aside to let them pass.
But when he looked up, the Duchessa had stopped, and was
smiling on him.
His heart beat harder.
"A lovely day," said the Duchessa.
"Delightful," agreed Peter, between two heart-beats.--Yet he
looked, in his grey flannels, with his straw-hat and his
eyeglass, with his lean face, his even colour, his slightly
supercilious moustaches--he looked a very embodiment of
cool-blooded English equanimity.
"A trifle warm, perhaps?" the Duchessa suggested, with her air
of polite (or was it in some part humorous?) readiness to defer
to his opinion.