"Rise, signor, rise! here is my cousin coming back from hunting."
Indeed, I had barely time to run to the piano and open it before Signor Ettore Grimani, in hunting costume and gun in hand, entered the room and deposited his well-filled game-bag at his cousin's feet.
"Oh! don't come so near me," said the signora; "you are horribly dirty, and all those bleeding creatures make me sick. Oh! Hector, go away, I beg, and take all these nasty great dogs with you; they smell of mud and soil the floor."
The cousin was fain to be content with that outburst of gratitude, and to go to his room and perfume himself at his leisure. But he had no sooner gone out than a sort of duenna appeared and informed the signora that her aunt had returned and wished to see her.
"I will go," La Grimani replied; "and do you, signor," she said, turning to me, "take this key away with you, as it is broken, and glue it firmly. You must bring it back to-morrow, and finish replacing the missing strings. I can count on you, signor? You will be sure to come?"
"Yes, signora, you may rely upon it," I replied; and I took my leave, carrying away the wrong key, which was not broken.
I was on hand promptly on the following day. But do not think, my friends, that I was in love with that young person; the utmost that can be said is that she attracted me. She was extremely lovely; but I saw her beauty with the eyes of the body, I did not feel it through the eyes of the soul; if, from time to time, I was on the point of falling in love with that childish petulance, my doubts soon returned, and I said to myself that a girl who lied so coolly to her cousin and her governess might well have lied to me; that, perhaps, she was twenty years old or more, as I had thought at first; and that it was quite likely that she had indulged in some previous escapades for which she had been secluded in that dull villa, with no other society than a pious old woman whose duty it was to scold her, and an excellent young cousin predestined to take upon his back, in his guilelessness, all her errors, past, present and to come.
I found her in the salon with the dear cousin and three or four hunting dogs, who came very near devouring me. The signora, who was nothing if not capricious, honored those noble beasts with very different treatment from that of the day before, and although they were hardly less dirty and disagreeable, she obligingly allowed them to lie, one by one, or all in a heap, on a large sofa of red velvet with gold fringe. From time to time she sat down in the midst of them, petting some and playfully teasing others.
Before long, I concluded that this revulsion of feeling toward the dogs was a bit of affectionate coquetry addressed to her cousin; for the fair-haired Signor Ettore seemed greatly flattered by it, and I don't know which he loved best, his cousin or his dogs.
She was bewilderingly vivacious, and she seemed to be keyed up to such a high pitch, the glances that she bestowed upon me in the mirror were so keen-edged, that I longed for the cousin's departure. And he did leave the room before long. The signora gave him an errand to do. She had to ask him several times, but he finally obeyed an imperious glance, accompanied by a: "Don't you propose to go?" uttered in a tone which he seemed altogether incapable of defying.