“Light and shade? Oh! I didn’t mean the picture, I meant Cesare, Peppina’s lover. Now do you understand? It must be our Mr Wilbraham whom he is vowing vengeance against.”
Colonel Maxwell’s ideas of Italian life were borrowed from the stage.
“Rum chaps. Always vowing vengeance, aren’t they?” he said indifferently. “I wouldn’t bother about Wilbraham. He can take care of himself.”
“Well I don’t like it,” repeated his wife.
“If the fellow’s a brute, get rid of Peppina.”
“That is absurd.” Mrs Maxwell was not accustomed to have her affairs interfered with so trenchantly, and she spoke with indignation. “That is so like a man. Peppina—when she isn’t breaking things—is the comfort of my life. The one comfort,” she added emphatically.
“All right.” He stepped back to gaze rapturously at his picture. “Now I wonder who’s the best man here to trust with this sort of thing. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if it turned out a Pinturicchio.”
Mrs Maxwell, who knew much better, held revenge in her hand, and yet somehow could not use it. It would have been too downright, too brutal. She looked at him pityingly.
“You had better not trust it to anybody,” she said sweetly. “They might steal it. If I were you I should keep to soap and water. And,” she added, quite inconsequently, as he thought, “Jim, you’re a dear old donkey!”
That ended it.