A Lady of Rome

A LADY OF ROME
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF “SARACINESCA,” “FAIR MARGARET,” ETC.
New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1906
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1906, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1906.
Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

MARIA

Maria Montalto was dressed as a Neapolitan Acquaiola and kept the lemonade stall at the Kermess in Villa Borghese. The villa has lately changed its official name, and not for the first time in its history, but it will take as long to accustom Romans to speak of it as Villa Umberto as it once did before they could give up calling it Villa Cenci. For the modern Romans are conservative people, who look with contempt or indifference on the changes of nomenclature which are imposed from time to time by their municipal representatives.
The lady was selling iced lemonade, syrup of almonds, and tamarind to the smart and the vulgar, the just and the unjust alike; and her dress consisted of a crimson silk skirt embroidered with gold lace, a close-fitting low bodice that matched it more or less and confined the fine linen she wore, which was a little open at the throat and was picked up with red ribband at the elbows, besides being embroidered in the old-fashioned Neapolitan way. She had a handsome string of pink corals round her neck, Sicilian gold earrings hung at her ears, and a crimson silk handkerchief was tied over her dark hair with a knot behind her head.