He leisurely consumed the Marsala which he had found it unnecessary to offer Ragna, tilting back on the legs of his chair, alternately holding his glass up to the light to enjoy the clear amber colour, and appreciatively smacking his lips as he sipped. Assunta, the cook, her portly form arrayed in a blue apron, stood by the sink rinsing the dishes under the tap and standing them in the overhead rack to drip. A square of sunshine lay on the red brick floor, and Civetta, the cat, lay basking in it, luxuriously curling and uncurling her velvet paws, stretching her neck to lick an unruly patch of fur and blinking at her surroundings with lazy topaz eyes. Copper kettles and pans decorated the whitewashed walls; the red brick stove and the dresser were well scrubbed and tidy.
Nando, having finished his wine, brought his chair back to the perpendicular and rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Mark my words, Assunta, something is going to happen in this house! When a woman looks like the Signora does to-day, it means trouble for somebody,—for—"
His dissertation was cut short by the bell, and in his haste to answer the summons he left the kitchen door open. Assunta heard Ragna send him to call a legno.
She shook her head, as her little straw fan blew life into the dying charcoal embers; it was most unusual for Ragna to go out at this time of day,—something was surely in the wind! In any case, her sympathies were with the Signora, even though, with an eye to her own interests she allowed the Sor Padrone to pump her as to the Signora's movements. The Signora never did anything wrong, so what harm could it do, she argued? Meanwhile an extra lira or two in a poor woman's pocket was not to be despised. Also instant dismissal would be the penalty of a refusal, and who could stand out against the Padrone when he glared at one with those awful eyes? Oh, certainly the Signora's lot was not one to be envied, even though she were a lady and had fine clothes and jewels! Such were the humble reflections of Assunta as she fanned the fire, and it gave her considerable satisfaction to think that her confessor Don Bazzanti was right in saying that rich and poor alike have their troubles.
"Signor Iddio is just, after all," thought Assunta piously, and crossed herself. It may give the moralist pleasure to observe that the circumstances that ground the soul of Ragna to the earth, made as a sequence, for the contentment of her cook.
CHAPTER X
Angelescu had spent the morning in the Uffizi, devoting his visit to the three or four paintings he really liked. Of these, the Madonna of the Goldfinch absorbed most of his time; the artless attitude of the children, the virginal grace of the Mother and the tender background with its suggestion of Florence in the distance, gave him the suggestion of the veiled delicacy of early spring, the faint perfume of early violets wafted from the slopes of Fiesole, the embroidery of almond-blossom against the sky. Other pictures claimed his attention, but he returned again and again to the "Cardellino," drawn by the exquisite purity of conception and execution that the divine Raphael must have acquired by some mysterious communion with angels. The face of the Madonna reminded him of someone he had known, but so vaguely that he made no attempt to capture the vague suggestion. The sweet Madonna-face continued to haunt him, and now as he lounged in his room, after luncheon, it floated before him wreathed in the pale blue fumes of his cigarette.
The years had passed over him lightly, though any close observer would have noted the slightly increased sternness discernible in the set of the mouth, the squaring of the lean jaw. The eyes were as kind as ever, the brow as calm, the hair had streaks of grey at the temples, but was no thinner than of old.