A spoonful of soup that Bertino was in the act of swallowing took the wrong course and choked him, while Angelica was thrown from her balance at the head of the kitchen stairs and almost fell to the bottom. When Bertino had stopped coughing he gasped:
“Juno the Superb?”
“Yes. Is it not famous?”
“Your wife?”
“Yes. Ah, what joy!”
“But it is impossible!”
“Not at all, nephew mine. I have found her. I saw her last night for the first time since the Feast of San Giorgio. Ah, how I had searched! It was in the theatre that I saw her—at the Titania, a grand spectacle. So many women, and beautiful! But not one was the equal of Juno. My word of honour for that. Well, I waited after the representation, but did not see her. To-morrow night, though, I shall say to her: ‘Juno, be my wife. In three months come to my house, to Casa Di Bello.’ These words will I say to her, and I shall wait at the stage door until she comes out.”
“You will wait many months, then,” said Bertino to himself with a smothered chuckle as he fell upon a patty of codfish that Angelica had just brought in.
“Grand trouble, grand trouble,” sighed Angelica, as she prepared the after-dinner zabaglioni[B] for her master. “If the signorina were here he would not dare bring her to the house. And when she comes and finds the singer has been in Casa Di Bello! O Maria—grandissimo trouble!”
In the evening Bertino accompanied Juno to the Grand Central Depot, whence she left for Buffalo with the rest of the hundred American beauties of the “Zapeaca” aggregation.