"Ye needn't be apologizin'," said Annie, in an entirely friendly tone. "Ye've got a perfect right to go anywhere ye please, an' know anyone ye please. It's none o' my business."
She bade him good-night with an air of cheerful aloofness, thanking him politely for an "interestin' afternoon." Her manner suggested that there was nothing to quarrel about; she had been mistaken in her estimate of Peter, but that was not his fault; in the future she would be more clear-seeing. This wholly reasonable attitude failed to put Peter at his ease. He passed a wakeful night, divided between profanity when he thought of the Circassian Beauty, and anxiety when he thought of Annie.
In the morning the plot thickened.
A fourth youngster was spending a few days at Willowbrook—another Brainard, cousin to the three who were already there; but, providentially, he was only thirteen months old, and had not learned to walk. Peter accepted the arrival without concern, never dreaming that this young gentleman's presence could in any degree affect his own peace of mind. The baby, however, had lost his nurse, and while they were searching a new one Annie volunteered to act as substitute. The morning after her visit to the Heart of Asia saw her ensconced on a rustic bench under an apple tree on the lawn, the perambulator at her side. The tree was secluded from the house by a mass of shrubbery, but was plainly visible from the stables. It was also closely adjacent to the grounds of Jasper Place, and this morning, by a fortuitous circumstance, Vittorio was clipping the hedge.
It had never entered Peter's mind to regard Vittorio as a possible rival; but now it suddenly occurred to him that the man was good looking—not according to his own ideals, but in a theatrical, exotic fashion, sure to catch a woman's eye. It also occurred to him that Vittorio's conversation was diverting—again from a woman's point of view. There was something piquant in the spectacle of a broad-shouldered, full-grown man conversing in the baby accents of a child of three. Peter went about his work that day, bitterly aware of the by-play going on under the apple tree. Annie had undertaken the task of teaching Vittorio English, and the lessons were punctuated by the clear ring of her merry laugh.
In the evening the man was enticed to the back veranda, where he sat on the top step singing serenades to his own accompaniment on the mandolin, while the maids listened in rapt delight. Even Miss Ethel added her applause; overhearing the music, she haled Vittorio and his mandolin and Italian love songs to the front veranda to entertain her guests. Peter, who had never been invited to entertain Miss Ethel's guests, swallowed this latest triumph with what grace he might. The irony of the matter was that it had been Peter himself who had first rescued Vittorio from social obscurity, and who had insisted to the other sceptical ones that the man was "all right," in spite of the misfortune of having been born in Italy instead of in Ireland. He had not hoped to be taken so completely at his word.
In this sympathetic atmosphere Vittorio expanded like a flower in the sunlight. He had suddenly become a social lion. His funny sayings were passed from mouth to mouth, and everybody on the place commenced conversing in Italian-English.
"Eh, Peta!" Billy hailed him one afternoon, "Mees Effel, she want-a go ride. She want-a you go too. I saddle dose horsa?"
"Aw, let up!" Peter growled. "We hears enough Dago talk without them as knows decent English havin' to make fools o' theirselves."