Eleanor winced and accepted.
* * * * *
The Palazzo, as they climbed up through the village towards it, showed itself to be an imposing pile of the later seventeenth century, with heavily-barred lower windows, and, above, a series of graceful loggie on its northern and western fronts which gave it a delicate and habitable air. On the north-eastern side the woods, broken by the stone-fall of the Sassetto, sank sharply to the river; on the other the village and the vineyards pressed upon its very doors. The great entrance gateway opened on a squalid village street, alive with crawling babies and chatting mothers.
At this gateway, however—through which appeared a courtyard aglow with oleanders and murmurous with running water—they were received with some state. An old majordomo met them, accompanied by two footmen and a carrying-chair. Eleanor was borne up a high flight of stone stairs, and through a vast and bare 'apartment' of enormous rooms with tiled or brick floors and wide stone cheminées, furnished with a few old chests and cabinets, a collection of French engravings of the last century, and some indifferent pictures. A few of the rooms were frescoed with scenes of hunting or social life in a facile eighteenth-century style. Here and there was a piece of old tapestry or a Persian carpet. But as a whole, the Palazzo, in spite of its vastness, made very much the impression of an old English manor house which has belonged to people of some taste and no great wealth, and has grown threadbare and even ugly with age. Yet tradition and the family remain. So here. A frugal and antique dignity, sure of itself and needing no display, breathed in the great cool spaces.
The Contessa and her daughter were in a small and more modern salone looking on the river and the woods. Eleanor was placed in a low chair near the open window, and her hostess could not forbear a few curious and pitying glances at the sharp, high-bred face of the Englishwoman, the feverish lips, and the very evident emaciation, which the elegance of the loose black dress tried in vain to hide.
'I understand, Madame,' she said, after Eleanor had expressed her thanks with the pretty effusion that was natural to her, 'that you were at Torre Amiata last autumn?'
Eleanor started. The massaja, she supposed, had been gossiping. It was disagreeable, but good-breeding bade her be frank.
'Yes, I was here with some friends, and your agent gave us hospitality for the night.'
The Contessa looked astonished.
'Ah!' she said, 'you were here with the D——'s?'