“La signorina Rosa?”
“Out too, she was giving a lesson—ah, it was only English people who went out in such a sun. What a pity! Even Mademoiselle Mattei (Maddalena proudly gave Violante the French title by which she was known to the public) was not there; she was tired with the rehearsals; she was lying down. Would il signor wait? They would be in soon.” Hugh thought that he would wait. This was not the first time that he had seen Maddalena.
Hugh came into the great shady room, where the Venetian blinds were down and the light was green and cool. Only one window was open—a little one at the end facing east—and on its ledge stood a great bowl of flaming flowers, the blue sky and a distant marble pinnacle, fretted and pierced, behind them; a girl in an old white dress on the low cushioned bench beneath—Violante’s delicate face and floating hair clear against the sky. There were red flowers and blue flowers in the great china bowl, but white ones in Violante’s little hands; and as Hugh’s foot fell on the old scratched inlaid work of the floor she held them to her lips. Then the foot-fall sounded, and she turned her head and sprang up with such a start that down fell flowers, red, white, and blue, with the china bowl in one common ruin. In another moment Hugh and Violante, both laughing and exclaiming, were picking them up, and Hugh was pursuing the bowl as it rolled along the polished floor.
“No harm done,” he said, as he brought it back, “it is not broken.”
“Oh, I am so glad! Father is so fond of it. Oh, how wet the cushion is!”
“Hang it out of window,” said Hugh, as he pulled it off the seat. “I don’t want it. And there,” taking it from the chair, “is another one for you.”
And Hugh sat down on the vacant half of the window-seat; and, replacing the bowl on the ledge, began to arrange the wet flowers in it. Violante sat down also; and, shaking the drops from the roses and oleanders, held them to him one by one.
She felt quite happy; past and future had floated away from her. She did not think of saying anything; the flowers were enough.
“I don’t think I understand much about arranging flowers,” said Hugh.
“They were dying, or I should not have taken them to pieces,” said she, with a glance at the white bouquet.