“But I think you would all be wise to take a little brandy first,” Peter suggested. “It is my despair that I am not able to provide you with a change of raiment. Brandy will be the best substitute, perhaps.”
The old priest laughed, and put his hand upon the shoulder of Emilia.
“You have spared this young lady an embarrassing avowal. Brandy is exactly what she was screwing her courage to the point of asking for.”
“Oh, no!” protested Emilia, in a deep Italian voice, with passionate seriousness.
But Peter fetched a decanter, and poured brandy for everyone.
“I drink to your health—c'est bien le cas de le dire. I hope you will not have caught your deaths of cold,” he said.
“Oh, we are quite warm now,” said the Duchessa. “We are snug in an ingle on Mount Ararat.”
“Our wetting will have done us good—it will make us grow. You and I will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?” said the priest.
A lively colour had come into the Duchessa's cheeks; her eyes seemed unusually bright. Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides, and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets. It was dark in the kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta's copper pots and pans. The rain pattered lustily without; the wind wailed in the chimney; the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed. And Peter looked at the Duchessa—and blessed the elements. To see her seated there, in her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray—it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.
“I wonder,” she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at him, “whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my hat—because it's a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling down my neck.”