"This is Angelo's favourite frock," said Marie. "He thinks"—her tone changed to bitterness—"that I look like a saint in it."
Mary made no comment. She felt that Marie was commanding her to silence. But it was true: this gleaming dress with its white and golden lights, and a filmy fichu crossed meekly over the breast, gave Marie a look of sweet and virginal innocence. Her head, on the long white throat rising out of the pointed folds, seemed delicately balanced as an aigrette.
"Do you think I shall be able to hold my own against the lovely ladies who are coming?" she asked lightly, snatching up her sleigh-bell gayety again.
"I feel sure you will," Mary replied in the same tone. Just then they faintly heard the electric bell which told that the guests had arrived, earlier than expected. Afterward Mary often remembered this question of the Princess' and her own answer.
Americo brought Miss Bland and her friend out to the loggia, which was the living-room of the family in warm, sunny weather. He announced the two names with elaborate unintelligibility, but Idina at once introduced her companion as Miss Jewett of St. Louis. "We met when I was in America," she explained. "Now she's 'doing' Europe in a few weeks, cramming in enough sightseeing for an Englishman's year."
"We're very flattered to be included among the sights," Marie said, smiling, but with something of the "princess" air which—perhaps unconsciously—she always put on with her husband's cousin. Miss Jewett, making some polite and formal little answer, gazed with glittering intentness at her hostess and Mary Grant. Her eyes, in the thin, sallow face with its pointed chin, were so brilliantly intelligent that they seemed to have a life and individuality of their own, separate from the rest of her small body.
"Where's Angelo?" asked Idina, when they had talked for a little while, and she had apologized for being too early.
"Oh, I'm so sorry he isn't at home!" Marie exclaimed, enjoying the blank disappointment that dulled Idina's expression. When she had produced her effect, she added that Angelo would come back in time for luncheon. Miss Bland turned her face away and looked down at a fountain on the terrace below the loggia. Fierceness flashed out of her like a knife unsheathed; but the back of her blond head, with its conventional dressing of the hair under a neat toque, was almost singularly non-committal.
Marie went on to make conversation about the fox Angelo had gone to see, laughingly describing the "fauna" of Cap Martin, of which season visitors knew little. "They say, as soon as everybody's well out of the way, the most wonderful birds and flowers appear, that only scientific people can tell anything about," she informed her visitors. Miss Jewett listened with interest and asked questions; but a curtain seemed to have been lowered behind Idina's eyes, shutting her mind away from outside things.
In the yellow drawing-room a clock tinkled out a tune, finishing with one sharp stroke; and Americo hovered uncertainly at the door-window of the big hall, seeing that his master was not with the ladies on the loggia.