When old Jacob White the miser, who built Whitefield House of stone
and marble, and furnished it with painted deal and calico--died, he
left all his wealth to a certain niece of his, his sister’s child,
who had been born and bred and married in Rome, and who was now Count
Floriani’s widow. She was his only relative; and, although it went
sorely against him to leave his wealth to one who was more than half a
foreigner, yet family pride at last conquered national prejudice, and
Madame la Comtessa Floriani was made the heiress of Whitefield House
and the lands circumjacent. This good fortune brought that Romanised
young Englishwoman from the blue skies and rich light of Italy, to a
remote village in the heart of the Cumberland mountains.
The society of Langthwaite was peculiar, and beyond measure dull.
Dull, because bigoted. The ideas of the denizens ran in the narrowest
of all narrow gauges, out of which not a mind dared to move. The
peculiarity of Langthwaite was its power of condemnation. Everything
was wicked in its more than puritanic eyes. Life was a huge snare;
the affections were temptations; amusements were sins; pleasure was a
crime; novel-writers “had much to answer for,” and novel-readers were
next door to iniquity; an actor was a being scarcely less reprehensible
than a murderer; and an artist was lost to all moral sense--if, indeed,
it ever chanced that artists were spoken of at all, for the Langthwaite
intellect did not penetrate far into the regions of art. No one “living
in the world” had a conscience, and no foreigners had the faintest
notion of virtue. Langthwaite was the centre of salvation, and outside
its sphere revolved desolation and ruin.
There was a national school at Langthwaite, where all the ladies
went on different days and at different hours, to superintend, some
the work, and some the spelling; and there was a Sunday school where
everyone fought for a class. It was the cordon bleu of Langthwaite to
have a class in the Sunday school. There were a great many dissenting
chapels, and a great many missionary meetings. Religious excitement
being the principal dissipation at Langthwaite, school feasts, Dorcas
meetings, district visitings, missionary sermons, awakening preachings,
and prayer meetings, were infinite. The parish clergyman, Mr. Bentley,
said that the parish was well-worked; and so it was. It was worked
until its mental condition was in such a state of turmoil and unrest
that no one knew exactly what to believe.
To this society came Rosa Floriani, the widow of an Italian
artist-count, certainly, and the semi-papistical latitudinarian,
perhaps. Why she came to Langthwaite seemed a mystery to many. But it
was in truth no mystery:--she thought it was only right to live among
her tenants, and to do her best to the society which gave her her
fortune.
She was a beautiful woman, about twenty-eight or thirty years of age,
with fine blue eyes, and light auburn hair, as soft and shining as
silk, braided in two thick wavy masses of imprisoned curls. She was
very pale, as if she had lived much in darkened rooms; but her lips
were red, and so were her nostrils. She was about the middle size; one
of those women with small bones and soft outlines who keep young and
supple to the last. She was negligent but coquettish in her dress;
with such taste in all her arrangements, that, when she received
her visitors in a white muslin dressing-gown and small morning-cap,
clinging, like trellis-work against flowers, to the curling hair, she
seemed to be far better dressed than the Miss Grandvilles in their
silks and satins, and jewellery and lace, and grander than their grand
carriage with a footman six feet high. She was excessively indolent
in her habits; at least the Langthwaite world said so; never, by
any chance, “dressed” at eleven or twelve o’clock, which was the
general time for paying morning visits in that part of the world; and
always receiving her _monde_, as she called them, upstairs in her
dressing-room, in this kind of pretty negligence--very often wearing
slippers, not shoes; little slippers of blue, or rose, or brown
satin, trimmed round with lace and ribbon, clacking on the ground
as she walked, for they had no heels. And indeed it was said that
Madame Floriani had been seen in the middle of the day, and even in
the evening, in the same undress, which was very near to a crime in
Langthwaite. But her abode was worse than her attire. She had fitted
up Whitefield House with all her Roman treasures, and they scandalised
Langthwaite. The Miss Grandvilles said they were quite shocked, and
Mr. Bentley spoke through his nose, and sighed as he called the pretty
woman “heathenish.” She had casts of many of the best statuary set
about her apartments--Saint Catherine’s Marriage, the Madonna, Saint
Sebastian, the Judgment of Paris, a Venus or two, and a few martyrdoms.
All this was like fire to stubble among the people of Langthwaite. But
Madame Floriani, totally unconscious of the effect she was producing,
only thought the Langthwaitians very cold in matters of art, and
strangely ignorant of real merit.
She was an artist herself; and sometimes when they came in their grand,
stiff, expensive, and ungraceful toilettes, they found her dressed
in a man’s brown holland blouse, girded with a broad leathern band:
while a little blue velvet cap, with a long tassel, was stuck jauntily
on the top of her graceful head, just above those curly handfuls of
bright auburn hair. Whereat they were doubly shocked; and the Miss
Grandvilles, very tall, bony and desiccated gladiators, said she was
really very unfeminine, and that it positively was not proper.
Madame Floriani’s worst enemy was Mr. Bentley. Mr. Bentley was the
young incumbent of Langthwaite. He was not more than thirty as it was,
and he looked like twenty. He was a tall, round, boyish person, with
a round face, and round cheeks highly coloured, an innocent little
snub nose, with those wide flat nostrils that make a greybeard look a
youth, light-grey eyes, narrow shoulders, red hands--very red--with
the fingers always swollen, as if from chronic chilblains, and a full,
unformed mouth, swollen, too, like a boy’s. But in spite of this round
face, with its ludicrous boyishness, Mr. Bentley had taken up the
condemnatory and ascetic side. His sermons breathed more than Judaic
severity; hatred of pleasure, hatred of art, hatred of liberation,
hatred of everything but extreme Calvinistic tenets, church-going,
and missionary meetings. This was Mr. Bentley’s profession of faith
as far as he dare utter it even in Langthwaite. Yet his solemn looks
and severe words were in such ludicrous contrast to that round, red,
apple-face of his, which nature intended to express jollity, that more
than once Madame Floriani looked up and laughed, saying, with her sweet
voice and foreign accent, “But, Monsieur l’Abbé, assuredly you do not
believe in yourself when you speak so!”
Which words used to make Mr. Bentley furious. As he said to the Miss
Grandvilles, his fast allies, it was very painful to see Madame
Floriani’s unconverted state of mind. Thus the war between the pretty
foreign woman and the grave young clergyman went on, and Langthwaite
stood aghast.
Madame Floriani thought she must do something for the place; so,
after every one had called, she began to give parties. Everyone went
to the first out of curiosity. Even Mr. Bentley who disapproved of
her so much that he called nearly every day at Whitefield--to try and
convert her--even he went. Though in general he was never seen at
any evening party, where the object was not to sing hymns and hear
a chapter expounded. But he made an exception. Madame Floriani had
arranged her rooms very prettily. She had brought in all the flowers
from the greenhouse, and placed them about the hall and drawing-room.
She had wreathed the chandeliers with evergreens mixed in with flowers;
while large baskets of flowers, evergreens, and moss, were placed on
pedestals all about, and brilliantly lighted. The rooms were a flood
of light, all excepting the little room off the drawing-room, which
old Jacob White had called the study, and which Madame Rosa said was
her boudoir; and this was dark. One candelabrum of two wax-lights
only, placed on a beautiful little buhl table, reflected by two large
mirrors set in deep gold frames of grapes and vine leaves, and falling
on a marble statue of Ariadne, set within a draperied recess--this
was all the light which Madame Floriani allowed in her boudoir. Many
objects of art were about; there were models of the Coliseum and the
Tower of Pisa, of the Lion in the Rock of Lucerne, of the Parthenon at
Athens, and there were busts of famous men--Dante, and Petrarch, and
Tasso--and pictures; a Magdalen by Giorgione, a Venus by Correggio,
and views of Italy and Greece; and there was a carved book-case full
of splendidly bound books, one was clasped with ivory and one had
precious stones upon the cover; these, with curtains and draperies
of rich rose-coloured silk, made up the furniture of Madame Rosa’s
boudoir. A new style of room in Langthwaite. They could not understand
it. The soft dim light, the living beauty on the walls, the wealth, the
art, the management of effect, all perplexed the worthy mountaineers,
and went far to convict Madame Floriani of some undesirable
characteristics. The Miss Grandvilles, who led public opinion on
matters of taste and propriety, peered into it curiously, but stepped
back again immediately, as if it had been a sorcerer’s cave; and by
way of being facetiously condemnatory, spoke to Madame Floriani of the
“great white woman in the corner” as something they did not understand,
nor quite approve of.
The widow looked at them with the surprised open-eyed look that had
become familiar to her since she came to Langthwaite, and then with her
silvery good-humoured laugh cried out, “Why, my dear mademoiselle, that
is Ariadne!”
“I wonder how you can like those horrible Greek stories!” said the
eldest Miss Grandville severely. “We who know so much better things, to
encourage those dreadful superstitions and idolatries in any way--it is
shocking!”
“But, my dear demoiselle, you don’t think that I believe in Ariadne as
the Greeks did!” said Madame Rosa. “It’s the art, not the goddess one
loves!”
“Art!” cried Miss Grandville, disdainfully, “art! What is art, I should
like to know, but the worship of the creature. Art is more nearly
successful, Madame Floriani, than I am afraid you think it is?”
“Ah, mademoiselle! pity me, spare me! I have been brought up among the
great things of art, and opened my eyes on the Coliseum--I have lived
where Michelangelo worked--I have drank in love of art with my first
breath. I cannot forget its rich lessons in this ascetic doctrine of
yours. On the contrary, I find in your beautiful country so much to
love and admire, that I wonder you are so little gifted with the power
of appreciating and reproducing the beauty He has created.”
This was a long speech for Madame Rosa, and strangely free from foreign
idioms. For she was excited, and forgot to be careful.
“My dear Madame,” said Mrs. Bentley, solemnly; “you speak of natural
religion only.”
“Come! come! we must not discuss theology at a soirée,” she exclaimed,
“that would be a misuse of time indeed. Will you waltz, Miss
Grandville!” And before that horrified lady could return an answer, the
pretty widow had glided across the room in her peculiar manner of grace
and lightness; and, going to the piano, dashed into a maddening waltz.
Now, to begin with, only two young ladies of the Langthwaite’s society
could waltz, and these were the daughters of a retired Captain, who had
the good luck to own relatives in London. But they were thought bold
and light in Langthwaite (although as good girls as ever breathed),
because they went to the opera and the theatres when they were in
town, and confessed to the polka, and waltzing. They were very pretty,
lively, and good-natured; and when Madame Rosa played her waltz, they
both stood up and said, that if others would dance they would. There
was no response. Some said, “What bold girls those Miss Winters are!”
and others, “Oh! Laura and Helen Winter will go the whole way with
any woman of the world! We can’t expect anything from them.” And one
old maid, who had never had an offer, nor heard a word of love in her
life, bit the end off the adjective “disgusting,” and flounced her
shawl--Shetland--tightly round her, as she thanked Heaven, that she
had never done such a thing when she was young! And then when Rosa
turned round on her music-stool, with her hands in her lap, and said,
“Eh bien! who will dance?” Mr. Bentley came up, “Excuse me, Madame
Floriani,” he said rather nervously, for the widow looked so arch and
lovely, that it required all Langthwaite severity to resist her. “You
are a stranger to our customs, and you do not understand us yet. I hope
that after you have been among us for a little time we shall be good
friends and be able to work together. But we have banished all these
frivolities from Langthwaite. My flock, I am happy to say, does not
dance.”
“Not dance, Monsieur! and why?” cried Rosa, with a burst of laughter,
real southern laughter, such as you never hear in polite society in
England now.
“I look on dancing, Madame Floriani, as an invention of the enemy.”
“What enemy?--the Russians? Oh no, I assure you, les Russes did not
introduce the dance. That is drôle; I did not know you were such good
patriots down here!” And she laughed again.
“But Madame Floriani,” said Miss Grandville, coming to the rescue; “we
don’t ourselves think dancing proper.”
“Not proper!” said Rosa, flushing to her temples, “what monstrous
ideas! What impropriety can there be in a party of young people amusing
themselves with dancing or anything else convenable?”
“It is a worldly amusement,” said Miss Grandville stiffly.
“And a degradation of the immortal nature,” said Mr. Bentley.
Madame Rosa looked from one to the other as if they had been Aztecs or
Red Indians, or any other unusual specimens of humanity; then, utterly
unable to find any sort of answer to such sentiments, turned back to
the piano and rattled off a brilliant fantasia, which no one understood
and every one thought noisy.
It was the same with the games that Madame Rosa proposed. For, when
dancing was forbidden, she thought she would enliven her society by
games. At first every one refused to take part in them. They were
dull, childish, uninteresting, a waste of time; but at last she gained
over some of the younger girls to a stray Cantab or two, whom she had
managed to get hold of somehow, no one knew how. “She must have fished
them out of the lake,” said Miss Grandville; for, indeed, Cantabs were
rare animals in Langthwaite, owing to the character for dullness and
cant which that beautiful vale had gained in the university. A few used
to come, certainly: generally pale young men wearing spectacles and
afflicted with colds; but Madame Floriani soon learnt to distinguish
the various types, and to fly this type as she would poison. Yet
even when she had gone so far as to positively establish games at
her soirées, the Miss Grandvilles and the Bentleyites used to sit by
grimly, and protest in loud whispers against the downward course of
things in Langthwaite.
Madame Floriani was almost disheartened. Had it not been for that
strange little bit of principle in her, that she owed it to the
society of her place to do something pleasant for it, she would have
given up the attempt of amusing it in despair. But it was a matter of
conscientiousness, and she did not like to be defeated. Fortunately,
just at the moment when she was most dispirited, she found that she had
really made some way. Her fascinating manners, her beauty, her grace,
her knowledge of the world, the purity and innocence of her mind, her
tact, and her imperturbable good-humour, at last had their weight.
Added to which exterior circumstances, that great want of the human
heart--that want of life, of pleasure, of sensation, which no ascetic
folly can destroy, however it may distort--began to make itself felt.
The Miss Winters and many of the younger girls ranged themselves on
Madame Floriani’s side. They helped her in her soirées; they played at
her games; they shared her picnics; they shot at her archery meetings,
nay, they even danced to her waltzes; though Mr. Bentley was so angry
that he did not speak to Miss Laura when he met her the next day,
because he said, as the eldest, she ought to have known better, and
was leading her younger sisters to destruction. Which made Laura cry,
poor girl; but Helen called their incumbent a detestable little fellow;
though she felt as if she had spoken blasphemy when she said it.
Altogether Langthwaite was decidedly divided into two parties, because
of the waltzing that went on at Madame Floriani’s Wednesday evenings.
No one could understand Mr. Bentley. He was the bitterest enemy Madame
Floriani had; at least to judge by his conversation; and, yet, if it
were so, why did he go so constantly to Whitefield House? and why,
if he disapproved so highly of her conduct, did he still continue
to attend her evening parties? He never missed one, by any chance,
though the Miss Grandvilles and others were only waiting for his lead
to follow him to open secession. And why did he turn pale when he saw
her coming down the lane, and why did he turn red when he shook her
hand? Miss Augusta Grandville, the youngest--she was thirty-four--who
had been the beauty of the family and gave herself still the airs
of a juvenile--Miss Augusta who had always been his fast ally, his
most indefatigable district visitor, his head class teacher, his
unfailing satellite, who would not have missed a missionary meeting
nor a bible class for all the world--Miss Augusta was uneasy. She
did not like these symptoms; she did not like Mr. Bentley’s leniency
in still continuing to visit Madame Rosa; her voice was for war, an
open declared right honest war, and she would be the incumbent’s
shield-bearer. So, she said to him one day, after a peculiarly joyous
evening at Whitefield House; adding what she thought an irresistible
argument, or rather inducement: “If you will give up Madame Floriani,
my sisters and I will follow you.” At which Mr. Bentley stammered and
blushed; then sighed, and said nasally, “We must still hope for her
conversion.”
Apple-cheeked Mr. Bentley was unhappy. He began even to look so: which
was somewhat difficult to that insignificant countenance of his.
But apple-cheeked Mr. Bentley was in love. Disguise it as he might
to himself and to others, deny it, scorn and reject it--it was none
the less true--he was in love with Madame Floriani. True, she was a
heathen; but then her natural graces were so many! True, she was a
woman of the world, an artist, a lover of frivolity--but then she was
kind to the poor and so gentle in her temper! True, she was all that he
most reprobated, all that he most abhorred; but then he loved her. What
should he do? Marry her, and so lose his influence over the world he
had governed so long? But should he lose his influence? The Grandvilles
would be angry; perhaps they would leave Langthwaite--he wished they
might; but he could manage all the rest. He should be rich too; very
rich; and money always gives power. Mr. Bentley had no pious horror of
that side of worldliness. Yes, on the whole he should be better off;
even in Langthwaite. Yes, he would marry her.
These were his reasonings spread out over many days and weeks, during
which time he was much at Whitefield House, often to Madame Rosa’s
great inconvenience and annoyance. And indeed of late she had adopted
the habit of denying herself; an offence which took all Mr. Bentley’s
love to forgive. For it was a falsehood, he said; and worse--forcing
her servants to lie for her. While Rosa only answered, “Mais, Monsieur
l’Abbé, it is a thing seen--it is understood--everybody knows what it
means when one says that Madame is not at home, or does not receive
to-day.”
“In the world, that may be,” said Mr. Bentley; “but we do not
understand such positions here.”
“Monsieur l’Abbé! are you not the same here as any where else? What is
there so peculiarly virtuous in Langthwaite that you must make laws for
yourselves against all the rest of the world, and condemn all the rest
of the world? You don’t seem to think that there is any crime in pride
and hatred, and self-sufficiency, and all that--only in happiness and
gaiety of heart. It is monstrous!” cried Rosa, excited.
“Madame Floriani, I beg of you one favour, I have asked it before.
Do not call me monsieur l’abbé, I am not a Romish priest, but a
Protestant minister,” said Mr. Bentley, gravely.
“Oh, pardon!” cried Rosa, with a toss of her graceful head, and making
that pretty little noise with her lips which you hear every Italian
make when perplexed or dissatisfied. “Oh, pardon! It is so natural to
me to call men of your profession abbés or curés, that I forget. I will
try to remember.”
“At least there is one great difference between us,” said Mr. Bentley,
turning very red.
“What do you mean?” asked the pretty widow tranquilly.
“Shall I tell you?” said the incumbent, in a voice that was meant to be
caressing.
“If you please,” answered Rosa, nestling herself back in her easy
chair, and putting up her feet on a tabouret.
“I mean,” said Mr. Bentley, after a short pause, and making a desperate
rush, like a cart-horse at a fence. “I mean, that we Protestant clergy
may marry, and the Romanist priest cannot.”
“Yes, that is true; and I don’t like married priests,” said Rosa
quietly.
“Why, Madame Floriani?” asked the incumbent, trembling.
“From association, I suppose. It is distasteful to me.”
“Then you would not yourself?--” stammered Mr. Bentley.
“What?” and Rosa lifted up her eyes in astonishment at his voice.
“Marry a clergyman!” said Mr. Bentley, with a kind of roar; and down he
came on his knees, first seizing her hand.
Madame Floriani slowly raised herself from a reclining posture. She
looked at the young incumbent blushing and trembling on the ground
before her; and gently drew away the hand he was holding between his
own. And his own were so red! She was going to speak seriously; but--I
am grieved to say it of Rosa who ought to have known better--the
young man’s apple-face and awkward attitude were so ludicrous--the
remembrance of all his absurd attempts at solemnity and asceticism
came up so vividly in contrast with the ridicule and humiliation of
his present position--it was such an unlooked-for offer, and was made
so clumsily, that her gravity gave way, and she burst into a fit of
laughter.
It was very wrong, and there was no excuse to be made for her; but
the situation was very ridiculous--though she should not have laughed
for all that. Mr. Bentley started up, seized his hat and very tight
umbrella--it was a glorious day in July, but Mr. Bentley patronised
umbrellas--and rushed from the house; turning round at the door to say,
angrily, “Your place shall know me no more, madame!”
And so war was finally declared, and Miss Augusta Grandville was
satisfied. I doubt if she would have been as content if she had known
the full particulars of the casus belli. Mr. Bentley said it was the
hardened and impenetrable nature of Madame Floriani--how that he had
sought to convert her, and she had answered him only with mockery--and
Madame Floriani said nothing. She only laughed; and drew a certain
sketch, which she showed to the Winter girls under the strictest vows
of secresy. Which, to their honour be it said, they religiously kept.
Though, when Helen Winter met Mr. Bentley the day after she had seen
that drawing, she turned so red in trying to look grave, that Laura
pinched her arm, and said, “Helen! don’t be silly,” below her breath.
The Bentleyites were the strongest. In a short time Madame Rosa’s
Wednesday evenings were almost deserted. All the very good avoided
her and her house as if a moral plague existed around her. The Miss
Grandvilles, indeed, very nearly cut her. They scarcely bowed when
they saw her, and passed her very stiffly even in church. Sometimes
they were afflicted with sudden short-sightedness, and did not see her
at all. Miss Augusta, through being triumphant, could afford to be
magnanimous; and she was a shade less distant in her manner: when met
with Mr. Bentley, she was positively gracious. Then the Cantabs went
back to their respective colleges, and the leaves began to fall. In
the dreary autumn weather--the rain and fog and drizzling mist--that
now came on, even her own adherents could not come out so often to see
her; so that the sweet face grew sad in thinking of the bright sky and
the warm hearts of Italy; and the joyous spirits sank in this social
solitude, for want of love and sympathy to sustain it. The days were
so grey and dark, she could not even paint; and in the Langthwaite
lending library, were only dull histories or biographies. The mud and
the rain frightened the soft half-foreigner, and kept her much within
doors, moping in a dull Cumberland house, where the clouds came down
so low, that they sometimes rested on the roof; and where the only
visitors she saw were half-a-dozen good-hearted country girls, with not
an idea amongst them beyond Berlin work or babies’ caps; which, to a
woman accustomed to the best and most intellectual society of Rome, was
scarcely sufficient mental distraction. What was she to do?--fight or
retire? She thought of Italy, of her friends there, of the treasures
of art, of the beauty, the free life, the ease, the love, the fulness
of existence,--and she covered her face in her hands, while tears
forced their way through her fingers. Then she thought of Mr. Bentley,
and of his offer and of how he looked when he was down on his knees
before her; and she laughed till she had a pain in her side. But she
could not laugh for ever at Mr. Bentley and his offer, and the ennui
of her life began to grow insupportable. It was reported at last that
she was going away. It was Laura Winter who said so first, by Rosa’s
permission, one day after she had been at Whitefield House. Madame
Floriani had cried, and said that she was ill: the constant damp did
not agree with her; and she had grown very thin and sallow rather than
pale as she used to be; and she said, too, that she was dull; she could
not bear it any longer. Her heart was Italian. It would not live in
such an atmosphere; and then she had cried dreadfully, and Laura had
cried too, for sympathy. As girls in the country always do.
So, Rosa owned herself beaten. Langthwaite morality had been too
strong for her, and Langthwaite coldness too severe. Mr. Bentley had
won the battle, and she cared now only for her retreat. She packed up
her pictures and her books, her statues and her blue silk curtains;
advertised Whitefield House for sale; and sold it well too. A retired
sugar-broker bought it, and furnished it in gold and velvet. He had
not a picture, nor a bust, nor a book; but he had hangings that cost
a small fortune, and an assortment of colours that must surely please
some one, as none in the whole rainbow were absent. Rosa had nothing
to do with this; all she cared for, was to get out of Langthwaite, and
to leave Cumberland clouds for Italian sunshine. She went to make her
farewell calls. And, after having kissed all the Miss Grandvilles on
both cheeks--for she was a generous, forgiving woman, with a loving
heart and a perfect temper, and would not bear malice if she died for
it--and after having shaken hands cordially with Mr. Bentley--who, like
a foolish fat schoolboy, attempted to sulk--she turned her sweet face
to the south, and left a climate that was killing her, and a people who
did not love her, for the beauty and the graciousness of Italy.
But she left the seeds of discord behind her that soon bore deadly
fruit. Deprived of their patroness, the Florianites sank to the ground.
They were snubbed, maltreated, slighted, and all but extinguished. And
when Miss Augusta Grandville at last got Mr. Bentley to consent to
their marriage, not one of them was invited to the wedding. It was the
day of retribution, and the Bentley faction were unsparing.
Madame Floriani did not forget her old adherents when she was
established in her Roman home again; and after the Grandville marriage
had turned out notoriously ill--for Miss Augusta was imperious, and
Mr. Bentley obstinate--she invited the two Winter girls to Rome, and
actually sent a man-servant all the way down to Langthwaite to take
care of them on their journey. Which royal act nearly canonised her,
though Mrs. Bentley said it was ridiculous, “And, good gracious! could
not those two girls take care of themselves--if indeed they went at
all, which if they had been her sisters they should not have done?”
Madame Floriani was very kind to her old friends. She took them
everywhere, and fêted and petted them beyond measure. Their soft,
pretty English faces, with their bright cheeks and long fair ringlets,
made a sensation among the dark eyes and raven locks at Rome. The Miss
Winters were decidedly the belles of their society--which is a woman’s
state of paradise. Madame Floriani with her foreign notions set about
marrying her young ladies. A task not very difficult; for foreigners
like English wives; because they can trust them so much; and English
women like foreign husbands, because they are more polite than their
own countrymen. So Madame Rosa married them both--one to a count and
the other to a baron. And when they went back to Langthwaite, which
they did for their wedding trip, the people called them my lord and
my lady, and treated them like queens. Even Mrs. Bentley yielded the
past, which was a marvellous distinction, and made up for a great deal
of the past. After all, then, Rosa had not entirely lost; the days of
her teaching survived in her disciples, for Laura Winter settled at
Langthwaite, and remodelled society there after the Floriani system.
And now that Mr. Bentley was married, of course his influence was
lessened; and all the young ladies who had tried to touch his heart by
their austerity, now thought more of Laura’s foreign friends who came
to see her, and who thought life without innocent laughter not worth
the living.