"Quite as beautiful, Filomena. But you are the first one to have the news. You must not go and tell. Leave that to the Prince."
"Indeed, Monsieur the Curé need have no fear. I've my déjeuner to cook. And I shall make something extra in honour of the great occasion." So, with a flash of white teeth and a bow no duchess could have bettered, Filomena went off about her business, followed by that aged patriarch, her father.
Three minutes after the pair had disappeared through the porte de service, Vanno and the curé arrived at the great gate, which was a famous landmark at Cap Martin, the Villa Mirasole having been built years ago for a Russian grand duke. Since he had been killed by a bomb in his own country, the house he loved had passed into other hands. Now it belonged to an English earl who had lost a fortune at the Casino: and it was owing to his losses that the villa was let this season to Prince Della Robbia.
Much of the furniture, which was of great value, had been sold, and the house was so denuded that it had practically to be redecorated and refurnished, to suit Angelo's ideas of fitness for his wife; because he wished to keep it on year after year. Only to-day was everything finished to his satisfaction.
The villa, whose exterior copied the Petit Trianon, had a large entrance hall of marble which opened to the roof, and was surrounded by a gallery. This hall was coldly beautiful, with its few bronzes and gilded seventeenth-century chairs, its tall vases of orange blossoms and tea roses, its faded Persian rugs and mosaic tables. But it made an extraordinarily impressive background or frame for a lovely woman, and Marie Della Robbia was a lovely woman. Vanno had seen her many times now in many different dresses since New Year's eve, when he had met her with Angelo, at the Mentone railway station; but she had never struck him as being a beauty, until to-day. As she came forward to greet her two visitors, he said to himself for the first time that she was beautiful.
She and Angelo had evidently just entered from the garden. Her right hand was full of roses, which she hastily changed into her left, and she wore a softly folding white dress, with a great cart-wheel of a Leghorn hat, drooping in all the right places, and wreathed with pink roses. She was a tall woman with a long neck, therefore could well wear such a hat; and it framed her head like an immense halo of dull gold. Her hair was brown with red lights in it, and her eyes were of exactly the same shade, the colour of ripe chestnuts. She had a beautiful short, rather square face, of a creamy paleness; a square, low forehead, straight dark brows, drawn very low over the long eyes; a short, straight nose, and a short, curved upper lip, fitting so charmingly into the full squareness of the under lip that her mouth looked like two pieces of pink coral cleverly carved one upon another. Her short, square chin was deeply cleft, and her long yet solid-looking white throat was like one of those slender marble columns which divide the arch of a Moorish window. At first sight, before she spoke, she would be taken for a woman of sensuous temperament, lazy, luxury-loving, not talkative, and the gay smile which flashed over her face at sight of Vanno and the curé seemed somehow unsuited to it, giving almost the effect of electric light suddenly turned upon a still pool, covered with the waxen weight of white water-lilies. Her manner, too, was a contradiction of her type. It had a light, sleigh-bell gayety, bringing thoughts of sparkling snows and iced sunshine. There was charm in it, yet it was oddly remote and cold, as if she, the woman herself, had gone away on an errand, leaving some other woman's spirit in temporary charge of her body. She looked to be twenty-five or six, and was meant by nature to be more dignified than she chose to be. She had elected to be light and girlish; and whatever she was, it was evident that in her husband's eyes she was perfect. He watched her admiringly, adoringly, as she welcomed her brother-in-law and the curé. The love in his eyes was pathetic, and would have been tragic if it had not been a happy love, fully returned, and culminating in a perfect marriage.
Angelo was delighted to see his brother, and especially to see him come in with their old friend the curé. This meant, he hoped, that the good man had found a chance to talk to Vanno, and perhaps to persuade him to stay at the Villa Mirasole.
The two young men shook hands cordially, with an affectionate grip, as if they had not seen each other for some time, though it was really no more than twenty-four hours since they had parted.
They were very much alike, and yet, as Filomena had shrewdly noticed at first glance, utterly different. Angelo was five years older than Vanno and looked more, because he wore a short pointed beard, cut almost close to the long oval of his cheeks, like the beards of many Italian naval officers. He was dark, but not so dark as Vanno's face had been painted by the desert; and whereas Vanno was both man of action and dreamer, Angelo had the face of a poet whose greatest joy is in his dreams. He seemed less Roman, more Italian than Vanno, and his profile was less salient, more perfect, being so purely cut that people who had seen him seldom, would think of him in profile, as one thinks always of a sword. Vanno would dream, and strenuously work out his dream. Angelo would dream on, and let others work; consequently the elder was not so vital, not so magnetic as the younger. He showed no trace of those battles with himself which gave Vanno's face strength and his eyes fire; yet it was clear that Angelo was a man of high ideals, and would be lost in losing them; whereas Vanno would fight on without ideals, only becoming harder. All this the curé had known since Angelo was a big boy and Vanno a little one, and he had learned it after an acquaintance of but a few days, for it was a theory of his that character is like the scent of various plants. It must so distil itself that it cannot in any way be hidden for long; and those who cannot recognize character for what it is are like people who have lost their sense of smell, and can detect no difference in the odour of flowers.
Almost at once the Princess proposed that the curé should begin to bless the house. He had brought with him a small olive branch which he had gathered in the woods; and with this he sprinkled each room with holy water, while the acolytes accompanied him, one holding a bowl, the other swinging the censer which sent clouds of perfume through the house. All the servants had been called together, even the Princess' English maid, who had left England for the first time to come to the Riviera. They followed the family from room to room, grave and deeply interested, Filomena in a large white apron exhaling a faint odour of spices and good things of the kitchen. When the ceremony was finished and not a room unvisited, Filomena flew back to duty, and carefully, but not anxiously, lifted the lid of each marmite on the huge stove. She had possessed her soul in perfect confidence that the patron saint of the household would look after her dishes during her absence, and she would have been not only surprised but indignant if anything had been burnt.