Now had come the moment for Vanno to speak.
The curé had sent away the acolytes. It still wanted half an hour of luncheon time, and the Princess led the way to a wide window-door on to the loggia. This was very broad, like an American veranda, with a roof of thick, dull greenish glass which softened the glare of sunlight, and did not darken the rooms inside. Roses garlanded the marble pillars, and Indian rugs were spread on the marble floor. There were basket chairs and tables, and a red hammock piled with cushions was suspended on bars arranged after a plan of Angelo's. Marie Della Robbia in her white dress made a picture among the crimson cushions, and it was scarcely possible for her not to know that the three men who grouped round her found the picture charming.
Vanno's heart was thumping. He had thought it would be easy and delightful to tell the news of his engagement, but it struck him suddenly that these two, Angelo and Marie, were utterly absorbed in each other. Perhaps they would not care as much as he had hoped. Or Angelo might disapprove. Not that any disapproval would matter now, not even their father's; but Vanno wanted sympathy and interest. As he searched for the right word to begin, groping for it, ashamed of his shyness, the butler appeared at the window, a Mentonnais-Italian who prided himself passionately upon his English. He too had been found for the house by the friendly offices of the curé—an eager, intelligent man with glittering eyes and a laughable tendency to blushing. He had learned his English in three months at a Bloomsbury boarding-house where, apparently, conversations had been carried on entirely in slang. If he were addressed by an English-speaking person in any other language, his feelings were so deeply wounded that he turned a rich purple.
"Highnesses please," he announced, "a French mister has come to appear. It is a Stereo-Mondaine and he have a strong want to prend some photographs of the garden and peoples which is done from colours already, very rippin'."
Angelo frowned slightly. And when he frowned his long oval face looked cold and proud, the face of an aristocrat who believed that the world was made for him and his kind. "Tell the man that we cannot allow him to take photographs here," he said.
The butler hesitated. "Highness, it is necessary that this man vivre. I think he has not too much oof. C'est dure, la publicité!"
"I can't help that, Americo," Angelo persisted. "You can offer him food if you think he is poor, but we do not want him to take photographs."
Vanno saw that Marie was looking at her husband intently, with a peculiar, almost frightened expression, as if she were studying him wistfully, and finding out something new which she had not wholly understood.
"Angelo," she ventured, in a small, beguiling voice, "perhaps this poor man has his pride of an artist. You see, I have a fellow feeling!" She smiled pleadingly, yet mischievously, and turned an explanatory glance on the curé. "I was an artist, and I should so love to know what is a Stereo-Mondaine."
Vanno had never before liked her so much.