“Caterina did not see us come in here?”
“I think not, she was dancing with my brother-in-law, Federigo Passalancia. Caterina is looking her loveliest to-night, isn’t she?”
But Lucia Altimare made no answer; she turned extremely pale, breathed heavily, and then slipped off the divan on to the floor, in a dead faint.
Andrea swore inwardly, with more energy than politeness, against all women who waltz, and at the folly of men who waltz with them.
III.
Every morning, Lucia Altimare, draped in the folds of a red, yellow, and blue striped dressing-gown, fastened round her waist and kilted up on one side with gold cord, her sleeves tucked up over bare wrists, an immense white pocket-handkerchief in her hand as a duster, proceeded, after dismissing her maid, to dust her little apartment, a bedroom and a small sitting-room, within whose walls her father allowed her complete liberty. The dainty office, accomplished methodically and always at the same hour, after she had dressed and prayed, was a source of infinite delight to her. It appeared to her that the act of bending her great pride and her little strength to manual labour, was both pious and meritorious. When the moment for dusting the furniture came round, she would tell her maid, with a sense of condescension:
“You may go, Giulietta, I will do it myself.”
“But, Signorina....”
“No, no, let me do it myself.”
And she felt that she was kind and humane to Giulietta, sparing her the trouble of dusting, and at the same time proving that she did not disdain to share her humble labour.