The lady smiled at the humorous introduction, and extended both her hands, which were somewhat large, but magnificently shaped. Could I do less than kiss both? The smile that flitted over her queenly features gave her the appearance of a veritable goddess.
"Is it not odd," she asked, "that we know each other so well, yet have never met until this moment?" Her voice was a rich, deep contralto, and very sweet.
"I have already enjoyed the happiness of seeing your ladyship," said I, smiling.
"Indeed? And where?"
"In my own garden. If I am not greatly mistaken, your ladyship and the two young ladies, your cousins, were yesterday at the pains to immortalise me by taking my photograph."
"Impossible!" she cried. "It could not have been you! With the spade in hand, and—oh, it is too odd!" And she broke into a loud laugh.
A laughing Pallas! The two girls ran but of the grotto to see what the staid Diodora was laughing at. "Come on, Cenni," said the lady to the little blonde: "here is the gardener of yesterday; the one you have photographed along with his garden."
But by that time the little one knew me well enough; she had recognised the rose in my button-hole, and, with pretended anger, she ran toward me, took hold of the collar of my jacket, and gave it a hearty pull.
"You are an artful and dangerous cheat and deceiver—that is what you are!" she said. "Why did you deceive us this morning, and make sport of us? Let us treat you as a gardener, and send you on errands? Why did not you tell us who you were?"
Siegfried came to my help. "How could he? He did not know you; maybe he took you for your own maids. If you had told him who you were, he would have returned the compliment."