“The Venus de Milo has no more figure than the peasant-women one sees on the promenade, women who seem as if they set their faces against the very idea of a waist. Be sure you get a card for Tuesday. I hate a dude; but I love to have some smart men about me wherever I go.”
“I shall be there,” said Castellani, bending over his hostess and imparting a confidential pressure to her fat white hand by way of leave-taking, before he slipped silently from the room.
He had studied the art of departure as if it were a science: never lingered, never hummed and hawed; never said he must go and didn’t; never apologised for going so soon while everybody was pining to get rid of him.
The next day there was a battle of flowers; not the great floral fête before the sugar-plum carnival, but an altogether secondary affair, pleasant enough in the balmy weather of advancing spring.
Every one of any importance was on the promenade, and among the best carriages appeared Lady Lochinvar’s barouche, decorated with white camellias and carmine carnations. She had carefully eschewed that favourite mixture of camellias and Parma violets which has always a half-mourning or funereal air. Malcolm Stuart and Miss Ransome sat side by side on the front seat with a great basket of carnations on their knees, with which they pelted their acquaintance, while Lady Lochinvar, in brown velvet and ostrich plumage, reposed at her ease in the back of the spacious carriage, and enjoyed the fun without any active participation.
It was Pamela’s first experience in flower-fights, and to her the scene seemed enchanting. The afternoon was peerless. She wore a white gown, as if it had been midsummer, and white gowns were the rule in most of the carriages. The sea was at its bluest, the pink walls and green shutters, white walls and red roofs, the orange-trees, cactus and palm, made up a picture of a city in fairyland, taken as a background to a triple procession of carriages all smothered in Parma violets, Dijon roses, camellias, and narcissus, with here and there some picturesque coach festooned with oranges and lemons amidst tropical foliage.
The carriages moved at a foot-pace; the pavements were crowded with smart people, who joined in the contest. Pamela’s lap was full of bouquets, which fell from her in showers as she stood up every now and then to fling a handful of carnations into a passing carriage.
Presently, while she was standing thus, flushed and sparkling, she saw a familiar figure on the footpath by the sea, and paled suddenly at the sight.
It was César Castellani, sauntering slowly along, in a short coat of light-coloured cloth, and a felt hat of exactly the same delicate shade. He came to the carriage-door. There was a block at the moment, and he had time to talk to the occupants.
“How do you do, Lady Lochinvar? You have not forgotten me, I hope—César Castellani—though it is such ages since we met?”