"She's an optimist. She's a bird of good omen," answered John. "She's satisfied herself, by consulting an oracle, that Fortune has favours up her sleeve for me. She encouragingly anticipates them by calling me Prospero before the fact."
Lady Blanchemain softly laughed. "That's very nice of her, and very wise. Aren't you going to read your telegram?"
"I didn't know whether you'd permit," said John.
"Oh pray," said she, with a gesture.
The carriage by this time had left the garden, and the coachman had turned his horses' heads northwards, away from the lake, towards the Alps, where their snowy summits, attenuated by the sun and the distance and the blue air, looked like vapours rising into the sky.
John tore open his envelope, read, frowned, and uttered a half-stifled ejaculation,—something that sounded rather like "I say!" and vaguely like "By Jove!"
"No bad news, I hope?" inquired the lady, sympathetic, and trying to speak as if she didn't know what curiosity meant.
"Excellent news, on the contrary," said John, "but a bolt from the blue." And he offered her the paper.
"Am on my way to Rome," she read aloud. "Could I come to you for a day? Winthorpe, Hotel Cavour, Milan."—"Winthorpe?" She pursed her lips, as one tasting something. "I don't know the name. Who is he? What's his County?" she demanded,—she, who carried the County Families in her head.
John chuckled. "He hasn't got a County—he's only an American," he said, pronouncing that genial British formula with intention.