With one arm still round Cristina’s shoulders, he turned to the girl and smiled, not a trace of embarrassment on his handsome face.
“Cristina is my second mamma!” he exclaimed. “She was my darling, kind nurse—as kind to me as the nurse in your Shakespeare’s beautiful tragedy, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was to her sweet girl.”
He turned, and repeated what he had said in Italian, and a little colour came into Cristina’s pale, sensitive face.
“Mademoiselle does not know our language,” she said in French, and then she added something in Italian.
He turned laughingly to Lily. “She tells me that I have a rival in her heart! You have made a conquest, Miss Lily! Cristina is hard to please where young ladies are concerned.”
There was no contradiction from Cristina, and he went on, shaking his finger at the old woman: “Never shall I forget bringing a beautiful lady to call on my mother! She was beautiful, but alas! her cheeks were too pink, her lips too red, her hair too yellow, to please the holy Cristina. So Cristina was very, very cold to the charming creature!”
Though Cristina knew no English, she evidently guessed what he was saying, for she shook her head and again said something in Italian.
“She says that you are not at all like the naughty ladies of to-day—that everything about you is real, and that you are more like one of the beautiful saints of old. And now.”—turning to Cristina and speaking in French—“Miss Lily and I wish you to do something for us, dear friend. We want you to go down into Monte Carlo and find papa and mamma. Just say that I have arrived—you need not say anything more. Let them think that I came by one of those de luxe trains that arrive in the morning.”
To Lily’s surprise Cristina made no objection. “In a few moments I will be gone,” she said.
As she turned away Beppo called out after her: “Cristina! You might go to the Hidalgo Hotel before finding my parents. Get the first-floor valet—he’s a very decent fellow, an Italian—to give you my dress clothes. I’ll dress up here, in the delightful room which mamma has had prepared for me, and which I am not going to occupy—or at any rate not yet! And Cristina? Tell the valet to order a motor to come up for me at—let me see, you’re early folk, aren’t you, and the Club’s open late—well, let’s say half-past ten, and then I can spend a pleasant hour at the Club before turning in.”