“Let me introduce you to my wife, Herr Falck,” said Donati, and Frithiof instantly understood that here lay the explanation of the Italian’s faultless English, since, despite her foreign name, it was impossible for a moment to mistake Francesca Donati’s nationality.
The house was prettily, but very simply, furnished, and about it there was that indefinable air of home that Frithiof had so often noticed in Rowan Tree House.
“You must forgive a very unceremonious supper, Herr Falck,” said Francesca, herself making ready the extra place that was needed at table. “But the fact is, I have sent all the servants to bed, for I knew they would have to be up early to-morrow, and they feel the traveling a good deal.”
“Much more than you and I do,” said Donati. “We have grown quite hardened to it.”
“Then this is not your regular home?” asked Frithiof.
“Yes, it is our English home. We generally have five months here and five at Naples, with the rest of the time either at Paris, or Berlin, or Vienna. After all, a wandering life makes very little difference when you can carry about your home with you.”
“And baby is the best traveler in the world,” said Donati, “and in every way the most model baby. I think,” glancing at his wife, “that she is as true a gipsy as Gigi himself.”
“Poor Gigi! he can’t bear being left behind! By the by, had you time to take him back to school before the concert, or did he go alone?”
“I had just time to take him,” said Donati, waiting upon Frithiof as he talked. “He was rather doleful, poor old man; but cheered up when I told him that he was to spend the summer holidays at Merlebank, and to come to Naples at Christmas. It is a nephew of mine of whom we speak,” he explained to Frithiof; “and, of course, his education has to be thought of, and cannot always fit in with my engagements. You go in very much for education in Norway, I understand?”
Frithiof found himself talking quite naturally and composedly about Norwegian customs and his former life, and it was not until afterward that it struck him as a strange thing that on the very day after his disgrace, when, but for Mr. Boniface’s kindness he might actually have been in prison, he should be quietly, and even for the time happily, talking of the old days. Nor was it until afterward that he realized how much his interview with the great baritone would have been coveted by many in a very different position; for Donati would not go into London society though it was longing to lionize him. His wife did not care for it, and he himself said that with his art, his home, and his own intimate friends, no time was left for the wearing gayeties of the season. The world grumbled, but he remained resolute, for though always ready to help any one who was in trouble, and without the least touch of exclusiveness about him, he could not endure the emptiness and wastefulness of the fashionable world. Moreover, while applause that was genuinely called forth by his singing never failed to give him great pleasure, the flatteries of celebrity-hunters were intolerable to him, so that he lost nothing and gained much by the quiet life which he elected to lead. It was said of the great actor Phelps that “His theater and his home were alike sacred to him as the Temple of God.” And the same might well have been said of Donati, while something of the calm of the Temple seemed to lurk about the quiet little villa, where refinement and comfort reigned supreme, but where no luxuries were admitted. Francesca had truly said that the wandering life made very little difference to them, for wherever they went they made for themselves that ideal home which has been beautifully described as