There was a sound of wheels on gravel, of horses' hoofs on stone, and
Lady Blanchemain's great high-swung barouche, rolling superbly forth
from the avenue, drew up before the Castle, Lady Blanchemain
herself, big and soft and sumptuous in silks and laces, under a
much-befurbelowed, much-befringed, lavender-hued silk sunshade,
occupying the seat of honour. John hastened across the garden, hat in
hand, to welcome her.
"Jump in," she commanded, with a smile, and an imperious sweep of the
arm. "I have come to take you for a drive."
The footman (proud man) held open the door, and John jumped in. But just
as the footman (with an air) had closed the door behind him, and before
the coachman had touched up his horses, there came a rhythm of running
footsteps, and the voice of Annunziata called, insistently, "Prospero!
Prospero!" Then, all out of breath, her pale cheeks pink, her curls in
disarray, Annunziata arrived beside the carriage, and, no wise abashed
by that magnificent equipage, nor by the magnificent old lady throning
in it, (no wise abashed, but, from the roundness of her eyes, a good
deal surprised and vastly curious), she explained, gasping, "A
telegram," and held up to John a straw-coloured envelope.
"Thank you," said he, taking it, and waving a friendly hand. "But you
should not run so fast," he admonished her, with concern.
Whereupon the carriage drove off, Annunziata standing and watching,
always round-eyed, till it was out of sight.
"What an interesting-looking child!" said Lady Blanchemain.
"Yes," said John. "I should have liked to introduce her to you."
"Who is she?" asked the lady.
"She's the private detective I told you of. She's my affinity. She's the
young limb o' mischief for whom I ravaged your stores of marchpane.
She's the niece of the parroco."
"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Why does she call you--what was
it?--Prospero?"
"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's
satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up
her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me
Prospero before the fact."
Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very
wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"
"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.
"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.
The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had
turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the
Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance
and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky.
John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled
ejaculation,--something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely
like "By Jove!"
"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to
speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.
"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the
blue." And he offered her the paper.
"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day?
Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."--"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as
one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his
County?" she demanded,--she, who carried the County Families in her
head.
John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County--he's only an American," he said,
pronouncing that genial British formula with intention.
"Oh," sighed Lady Blanchemain, her expectations dashed; and drawing in
her skirts, she sank a little deeper into her corner.
"He hasn't got a County," repeated John. "But he's far and away the
greatest swell I know."
"A swell? An American?" Lady Blanchemain pressed down her lips, and gave
a movement to her shoulders.
"An aristocrat, a patrician," said John.
"Fudge!" said Lady Blanchemain. "Americans and Australians--they're
anything you like, but they're never that."
John laughed. "I adore," he said, "our light and airy British way of
tarring Americans and Australians with the same brush,--the descendants
of transported convicts and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers!"
"Is your Winthorpe man a descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers?" asked Lady
Blanchemain, dryly.
"Indeed he is," said John. "He's descended from ten separate individuals
who made the first voyage in the _Mayflower_. And he holds, by-the-by,
intact, the lands that were ceded to his family by the Indians the year
after. That ought to recommend him to your Ladyship,--an unbroken tenure
of nearly three hundred years."
"Old acres," her ladyship admitted, cautiously, "always make for
respectability."
"Besides," John carelessly threw out, "he's a baronet."