Seated in an arm-chair of the most upright Empire style, a carved curial chair of darkest mahogany, with bronze bosses and ornaments, cushioned in a myrtle pattern, Vittoria sat upright before her Great Aunt and kept respectful silence. The bride in this third and last visit to the Duchess of Altomonte, a visit of thanks and farewell, wore a rich dress of pleated silver, gay with handsome embroidery; in her little ears she wore solitaires, a large hat with a silver-grey feather on her blond tresses, and amid the lace of her corsage an antique necklace of diamonds and emeralds. She was dressed so luxuriously because, on the first visit made to the proud and austere Bourbon grande dame, the Duchess had suddenly observed to her nephew that his wife was dressed too humbly, and not suitably to her position and the visit she had come to make.
“Vittoria is very simple in her toilette,” Marco had replied philosophically.
“It is one of the mistakes of society in modern times, this affectation of simplicity,” the Duchess had replied immediately.
So at the state dinner, which the Duchess had given to the young couple, to which had been asked all the old gentlemen and ladies who had remained faithful to the King of the Two Sicilies, and had followed him in exile to Paris, Vittoria had not only put on her most expensive evening dress, but wore in her hair the diadem given her by her mother-in-law, Donna Arduina, and round her neck a necklace, a gift from Marco.
Under the weight of the glittering jewels, in that respectable but melancholy society, the pretty bride had not pronounced a single word.
Now, a day before their departure, she had come to present her compliments to her Great Aunt, and intimidated by her surroundings, but especially by the Duchess of Altomonte, Vittoria sat on her Empire chair, with closed mouth and drooping eyes waiting for her great new relation to condescend a word and speak to her.
The Duchess of Altomonte, Donna Guilia de’ Masi, born of the family of Castropignano, had completed eighty years. Her abundant hair, which she preserved to that age, was of the finest shining white, and dressed in old-fashioned style, framing a face which in youth and maturity must have reflected a majestic and imperious beauty. Of the past it was true there remained only an expression of power in the still bright eyes, and the proud smile, wonderful in its energy at that age. Certainly the shoulders were bent and the step a little slow, but, even in this decadence of years and the signs of dissolution, the Duchess had known how to impress and be imposing. The great Empire chair, where she liked to sit for hours together, with a big embroidered cushion in the fashion of the period beneath her feet shod in black velvet, resembled a throne, and the very black ebony stick with the curved silver handle, on which she leaned her tottering steps, resembled a sceptre. Her whole person gave a sense of immense respect, of silent devotion, of a past of honour and fidelity to all promises and oaths, of a past of lofty sacrifice accomplished in silence without a request for compensation, of a life entirely rigid and firm, where perhaps there was wanting a sense of kindness and indulgence, but where all the other virtues had triumphed.
The Duchess had little by little seen her kindred disappear, some carried away by death, others by destiny, some far away returning now and again, some far away for ever. Her legitimate King was dead, buried in a lonely church in a lonely part of Austria, and every year she went to visit her Queen, a Queen full of sorrow supported with a most brave and admirable mind. The interview between them was usually short, sad, and austere. So everything of the past and present added grandeur to the figure of Guilia de’ Masi, Duchess of Altomonte.
“Marco!” she cried, in a still clear voice, in which there was always a tone of command.
“Yes, aunt,” he replied at once.