‘French cooks with fetching caps have elastic hearts.’
‘Ah,’ said he, ‘and so have black-eyed little Italian nursemaids—I’m glad you’re not an Italian nursemaid, Marcia.’
‘I’m glad you’re not a French cook—Laurence.’ And then she laughed. ‘Will you tell me something?’
‘Anything you wish.’
‘Were you ever in love with the Contessa Torrenieri?’
‘I used to fancy I was something of the sort nine or ten years ago. But, thank heaven, she was looking for a count.’
‘I’m glad she found him!’ Marcia breathed.
As they crossed the terrace to the little table at the corner of the grove where the afternoon before—it seemed a century—Mrs. Copley and Marcia had taken tea, one of the soldiers came hastily forward. ‘Permit me, signorina,’ he said with a bow, taking the plate from her hands. Marcia relinquished it with a ‘Grazia tanto’ and a friendly smile. They were so polite, so good-natured, these Italians! Cups were brought, the table was spread, and Marcia poured the coffee with as much ceremony as if she were presiding at an afternoon reception. The two, at the soldiers’ invitation, stayed and shared the meal with them. Marcia never forgot that sunrise breakfast-party on the terrace—it was Villa Vivalanti’s last social function.
She watched Sybert’s intercourse with these men with something like amazement, feeling that she had still to know him, that, his character was in the end the mystery it had seemed. With his hand on their shoulders, he was chatting to the group as if he had known them all his life, cordial, friendly, intimate, with an air of good-comradeship, of perfect comprehension, that she had never seen him employ toward even his staunchest friends of the Embassy. One of the soldiers, noticing the direction of her glance, informed her that the signore had been up all night, alternately talking to them and pacing the walks of the ilex grove, and he added that the signore was a galantuomo—a gentleman and a good fellow.
‘What did he talk about?’ she asked.