Half an hour later Assunta reappeared, clad in Sunday garments, wearing her best coral earrings and her little black silk shoulder shawl covered with gay embroidered flowers. She held out a letter to the girl.
"I go to take the wreaths to Our Lady," she announced, "and to confess and pray. The Signorina has made them pretty, if they are but common things."
Daphne was reading her letter; even the peasant woman could see that it bore glad tidings, for the light that broke in the girl's face was like the coming of dawn over the hills.
"Wait, Assunta," she said quietly, when she had finished, and she disappeared among the trees. In a minute she came back with three crimson roses, single, and yellow at the heart.
"Will you take them with your wreaths for me to the Madonna?" she said, putting them into Assunta's hand. "I am more thankful than either one of you."
CHAPTER XVI
Assunta had carried a small tray out to the arbor in the garden, and Daphne was having her afternoon tea there alone. About her, on the frescoed walls of this little open-air pavilion, were grouped pink shepherds and shepherdesses, disporting themselves in airy garments of blue and green in a meadow that ended abruptly to make room for long windows. The girl leaned back and sipped her tea luxuriously. She was clad in a gown that any shepherdess among them might have envied, a pale yellow crepy thing shot through with gleams of gold. Before her the Countess Accolanti's silver service was set out on an inlaid Florentine table, partially protected by an open work oriental scarf. Upon it lay the letter that had come an hour before, and the Signorina now and then feasted her eyes upon it. Just outside the door was a bust of Masaccio, set on a tall pedestal, grass growing on the rough hair and heavy eyelids. Pavilion and tea-table seemed an odd bit of convention, set down in the neglected wildness of this old garden, and Daphne watched it all with entire satisfaction over her Sevres teacup.
Presently she was startled by seeing Assunta come hurrying back with a teacup and saucer in one hand, a hot water jug in the other. The rapid Italian of excited moments Daphne never pretended to understand, consequently she gathered from Assunta's incoherent words neither names nor impressions, only the bare fact that a caller for the Countess Accolanti had rung the bell.
"He inquired, too, for the Signorina," remarked the peasant woman finally, when her breath had nearly given out.