“They are here,” said the guests, craning their necks and whispering. “No fiasco this time.”
“This way, signorina,” piped Carolina, with a spidery smile, stepping aside and waving her fly into the web.
They entered the room prepared for them, and Signor Di Bello regarded in wonder the white shape on the dressing case. “Soul of a camel!” he cried. “What is that?”
“A little surprise that we have for the bride,” answered Carolina, advancing and raising the window shade. “A wedding present, in fact. Eccolo!”
She drew off the veil quickly, and the Last Lady stood revealed in the streaming sunlight.
“By the Egg of Columbus!”
Every eye turned from the marble Juno to the Juno of flesh and blood. She had let fall the counterfeit blossoms that the signore had just placed in her hand, but gave no other token of disquiet. A glow of admiration lit up her face as she gazed steadily at her double in stone.
“It is really beautiful,” she said calmly, moving nearer. “I knew I should look well in marble.”
She passed one hand behind the bust as though to judge it by the sense of touch, but before any one could hinder she lifted it to the window sill and sent it somersaulting into the rear court. The crash brought a score of heads to the lower windows, and the guests set up a cry that disaster had again visited the wedding of Signor Di Bello.
“Infame! infame!” chorused Carolina, Armando, and Marianna when they looked out and beheld the Last Lady in a dozen pieces on the flagstones, while the bridegroom merely laughed, for it seemed to him a capital joke.