“I am sorry to make so many mistakes,” Olive said apologetically as she laboured away at her part of an easy piece arranged for violin and piano.
“Oh, it is nothing. I have made ever so many myself, and I ought to have turned the page for you.”
The gentle voice was rather tremulous.
“That was charming,” pronounced the Marchesa. “Now that sonata, Edna. I am so fond of it.”
“Very well, auntie.”
The Prince had gone into the billiard-room with his host, and Mamie was with them. They were knocking the balls about and laughing ... laughing.
CHAPTER II
In the Cascine gardens the lush green grass of the glades was strewn with leaves; soon the branches would be bare, or veiled only in winter mists, and the Arno, swollen with rain, ran yellow as Tiber. It was not a day for music, but the sun shone, and many idle Florentines drove, or rode, or walked by the Lung’Arno to the Rajah’s monument, passing and repassing the bench where Olive sat with Madame de Sarivière’s stout and elderly German Fräulein. Mamie was not far away; flamboyant as ever in her frock of crimson serge, her black curls tied with ribbon and streaming in the wind, she was the loud centre of a group of girls who played some running game to an accompaniment of shrill cries and little screams of laughter.