“Your cousins, Collino, my own beloved children!” he exclaimed. “Never will Vittoria and Cecilia forgive me, if I do not on my return prove to have got your promise to pay them a visit before you quit Italy. We must persuade your father to spare you for a day; you must dine and sleep, and, ho, ho! who knows but that when our ladies have gone to bed, you and I will not play the bachelor in our gay Naples? It would, I am afraid, be useless to urge you, my dear Philip, to be of the party, but ah! the happiness, ah! the honour that there would be in the Palazzo Viagi, if Lord Yardley would make himself of the family! But I know, I know: you come here to enjoy your quiet and blessed memories.”
“Very good of you, Salvatore,” said Philip. “But, as you say, I come here for quiet. I am afraid I shall hardly be able to get across to Naples.”
“Ah! Il eremito, as we say! The hermit, is it not?”
“You speak excellent English, Uncle Salvatore,” said Colin.
“And should I not? Was not English the language of my adored mother? It is Vittoria’s dream to go to England. Some day, perhaps, I will take Vittoria to see the home of her English ancestors, of her grandmother and of yours, my Colin. But the expense! Dio! the expense of travel. Once it was not so with the Viagi; they did not need to count their soldi, and now there are no soldi to count! They were rich once; their wealth was colossal, and had it not been for nefarious enemies, slanderers, and swindlers, they would be rich still, and a line of princes. As it is, they have nothing left them but their pride, and from that, whatever their poverty, they will never part. I, the head of the family, proclaim that to the world.”
“Very proper,” said Philip.
Salvatore had hit himself quite a severe blow on the chest as he proclaimed his pride, which had set him coughing. This was curable by a considerable draught of hock, which started him again on the adulatory tack.
“A nectar! Nectar of the gods,” he exclaimed. “There is no such wine to be obtained in my beggarly country. But you must be a millionaire to drink it. I would die happy drowned in wine like that.”
“You must take a bottle or two away with you,” said Philip, rising. “If you will excuse me for ten minutes, there are a couple of letters I want to finish for this afternoon’s post. And then, perhaps, you will spare me a quarter of an hour, Salvatore, for a talk. There will be plenty of time before your boat goes.”
“Dear friend, my time is yours,” said Salvatore, “and the boat may go to Naples without me if we have not finished. I brought a small toilet bag in case I stopped the night. I can no doubt find a room at some modest hotel.”