“What do you think of it?—pretty, eh!”
The consolation turned to torture, the relief to anguish. Andrea grew grave and gloomy.
IV.
One day Lucia appeared in the drawing-room with a resolute and almost defiant look on her face. Her nostrils quivered as if they scented powder, and her whole being was ready for battle. Looking elsewhere, while Andrea handed her a cup of coffee, she calmly gave him a note. He trembled all over without losing his presence of mind. He found a pretext to leave the room, and ran down into the courtyard to read it. They were a few burning words of love written in pencil. “He was her Andrea, her own strong love; she loved him, loved him, loved him; her peace was gone, yet she was happy in that she loved, unhappy in not being permitted to love him. They must put a bold face on it ... Alberto and Caterina, poor, poor betrayed ones ... had no suspicions. He, Andrea, should study her, Lucia, so that he might understand what she said to him with her eyes; she was his inamorata, his mate, and she loved her handsome lord....”
All the gloom had vanished. Andrea felt as if joy must choke him. He began to talk loudly to Matteo, the stable-man; called the hounds, Fox and Diana, who leapt upon him; seized Diana by the scruff of her neck; made Fox jump, telling Matteo that he was in his dotage; that the dogs were worth two of him, but that, vice versâ, he was a good bestia. Two ladies’ heads and the small head of a sort of scalded bird, looked down upon him from a window. He called out to the ladies that he proposed a good sharp drive: the ladies, like two princesses in disguise, in the victoria, he and Alberto in the phaeton.
“And how about luncheon?” grumbled the thin voice of Alberto, buried under a woollen scarf.
“Of course, we will lunch first,” he thundered from the courtyard. And he mounted the stairs, four at a time, singing and shaking his leonine mane. When he got to the top, he took Alberto by the throat, and forced him to turn round the drawing-room, in the mazes of the polka.
Lucia watched this violent ebullition of joy, without stirring an eyelash.
“Since you are so gallant, to-day, Andrea,” she said, coolly, “suppose you offered me your arm, to go into lunch. ’Tis a courtesy you are wanting in.”
“I am a barbarian, Signora Sanna. Will you do me the honour to accept my arm?” he said, bowing profoundly.