Susanna, Miss Sandus, a white peacock, and six ring-doves were taking
refreshments in the garden, in the shade of an oleander-tree. There
were cakes, figs, and lemonade, grains of dried maize, and plenty of
good succulent hemp-seed. The ring-doves liked the hemp-seed and the
maize, but the white peacock seemed to prefer sponge-cake soaked in
lemonade.
"I know a literary man who once taught a peacock to eat sponge-cake
soaked in absinthe," Miss Sandus remarked, on a key of reminiscence.
"Really? An unprincipled French literary man, I suppose?" was
Susanna's natural inference.
"No, that's the funny part of it," said Miss Sandus. "He is an eminent
and highly respectable English literary man, and the father of a family
into the bargain. I dare n't give his name, lest he might have the law
of me."
"He ought to have been ashamed of himself," Susanna said. "What became
of the poor peacock? Did it descend to a drunkard's grave?"
"That's a long story," said Miss Sandus. "When you 're married and
come to stay with me in Kensington, I 'll ask the literary man to
dinner. Perhaps he 'll give you his account of the affair. Ah, here
's your ambassador returned," she exclaimed all at once, as Father
Angelo, his beads swinging beside him, appeared advancing down the
pathway.
"Well, Father----?" Susanna questioned, looking at him with eyes that
were dark and anxious.
"Your cousin is a very headstrong person," said Father Angelo. "He
refuses to accept your offer. He swept it aside like a whirlwind."
"Ah,--who told you he would?" crowed Miss Sandus.
"He is here to speak with you in person. He is waiting in the loggia,"
said Father Angelo.
Susanna leaned back in her chair. She had turned very pale.
"I think I am going to faint," she said.
"For mercy's sake, _don't_," Miss Sandus implored her, starting.
"I won't," Susanna promised, drawing a deep breath. "But you will
admit I have some provocation. Must I--must I see him?"
"_Must_ you?" cried Miss Sandus. "Are n't you _dying_ to see him?"
"Yes," Susanna confessed, with a flutter of laughter. "I 'm dying to
see him. But I 'm so _afraid_."
"I 'll disappear," said Miss Sandus, rising. "Then the good Father can
bring him to you."
"Oh, don't--don't leave me," Susanna begged, stretching out her hand.
"My dear!" laughed Miss Sandus, and she tripped off towards the Palace.
"Well, Father," Susanna said, after a pause, "will you show him the
way?"
The loggia, as Father Angelo called it, where he had left Anthony,
while he went to announce his arrival, was the same long open colonnade
in which, that morning, Susanna had had her conference with
Commendatore Fregi. It was arranged as a sort of out-of-doors
living-room. There were rugs on the marble pavement, and chairs and
tables; and on the tables, besides vases with flowers, and other
things, there were a good many books.
Absently, mechanically, (as one will when one is waiting in a strange
place where books are within reach), Anthony picked a book up. It was
an old, small book, in tree-calf, stamped, in the midst of much
elaborate gold tooling, with the Valdeschi arms and coronet.
Half-consciously examining it, he became aware presently that it was a
volume of the poems of Ronsard. And then somehow it fell open, at a
page that was marked by the insertion of an empty envelope.
The envelope caught Anthony's eye, and held it; and that was scarcely
to be wondered at, for, in his own unmistakable handwriting, it was
addressed to Madame Torrebianca, at the New Manor, Craford, England,
and its upper corner bore an uncancelled twenty-five centime Italian
postage-stamp.