“Yes,” replied his host immediately, glad to be able to open his mouth and speak of something else; “my gardens there work miracles, and also my gardeners. Every day new flowers and fruit arrive.”
“Oh, you must be very happy about it, Maria,” observed Flaminia, with a good-natured smile on her lips.
“Oh, most happy,” she murmured.
“You ought to love La Lama, Donna Maria,” remarked Francesco Serlupi, in an endeavour to mend matters; “it is some time since you were there?”
But the question was put in a low voice, besides, the dinner was finished, so his hostess rose suddenly without replying to this latest piece of stupidity, and leaning on the arm of Senator Fabio Guasco the other guests followed her, Flaminia Colonna on the arm of Emilio, Gianni Provana, Francesco Serlupi, and Mario Colonna in a group.
“However did it come into your head?” said Gianni Provana to Serlupi, keeping him back a little with Mario Colonna. “No one will ask you to dinner, my dear friend, if you start breaking the dishes in your host’s face at dessert.”
“You are right; I am a proper stupid,” Serlupi declared, as they crossed the two or three rooms before the drawing-room, “I shall go away at once; I can’t stop here.”
“Worse and worse,” observed Colonna; “stop a moment or two longer.”
“You are going away with Donna Flaminia, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we can’t possibly stay. We are going to Madame Takuhira’s last reception at the Japanese Legation.”