Florence altogether was full of pleasant novelty to the young traveller. To find herself living up two pair of stairs, with windows overlooking the Arno, and at a little distance the quaint buildings of the Ponte Vecchio, was as great a change as the first change had been from Langton-Courtenay to the little Cottage at Shanklin. Mrs. Anderson’s apartment on the second floor of the Casa Graziana was not large. There was a drawing-room which looked to the front, and received all the sunshine which Florentine skies could give; and half a mile off, at the other end of the house, there was a grim and spare dining-room, furnished with the indispensable tables and chairs, and with a curious little fireplace in the corner, raised upon a slab of stone, as on a pedestal. It would be difficult to tell how cold it was here as the Winter advanced; but in the salone it was genial as Summer whenever the sun shone. The family went, as it were, from Nice to Inverness when they went from the front to the back, for their meals. Perhaps it might have been inappropriate for Miss Courtenay of Langton-Courtenay to live up two pair of stairs; but it was not at all unsuitable for Mrs. Anderson; and, indeed, when Lady Barker, who was Mrs. Anderson’s friend, came to call, she was much surprised by the superior character of the establishment. Lady Barker had been a Consul’s daughter, and had risen immensely in life by marrying the foolish young attaché, whom she now kept in the way he ought to go. She was not the Ambassadress, but the Ambassadress’s friend, and a member of the Legation; and, though she was now in a manner a great lady herself, she remembered quite well what were the means of the Andersons, and knew that even the terzo piano of a house on the Lung-Arno was more than they could have ventured on in the ancient days.
‘What a pretty apartment,’ she said; ‘and how nicely situated! I am afraid you will find it rather dear. Florence is so changed since your time. Do you remember how cheap everything used to be in the old days? Well, if you will believe me, you pay just fifteen times as much for every article now.’
‘So I perceive,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘We give a thousand francs for these rooms, which ought not to be more than a hundred scudi—and without even the old attraction of a pleasant accessible Court.’
Lady Barker opened her eyes—at once, at the fact of Mrs. Anderson paying a thousand francs a month for her rooms, and at her familiar mention of the pleasant Court.
‘Oh, there are some very pleasant people here now!’ she said; ‘if your young ladies are fond of dancing, I think I can help them to some amusement. Lady Granton will send you cards for her ball. Is Ombra delicate?—do you still call her Ombra? How odd it is that you and I, under such different circumstances, should meet here!’
‘Yes—very odd,’ said Mrs. Anderson; ‘and yet I don’t know. People who have been once in Italy always come back. There is a charm about it—a——’
‘Ah, we didn’t think so once!’ said Lady Barker, with a laugh. She could remember the time when the Andersons, like so many other people compelled to live abroad, looked upon everything that was not English with absolute enmity. ‘You used to think Italy did not agree with your daughter,’ she said; ‘have you brought her for her health now?’
‘Oh no! Ombra is quite well; she is always pale,’ said Mrs. Anderson. ‘We have come rather on account of my niece—not for her health, but because she had never seen anything out of her own country. We think it right that she should make good use of her time before she comes of age.’
‘Oh! will she come of age?’ said Lady Barker, with a glance of laughing curiosity. She decided that the pretty girl at the window, who had two or three times broken into the conversation, was a great deal too pretty to be largely endowed by fortune; and smiled at her old friend’s grandiloquence, which she remembered so well. She made a very good story of it at the little cosy dinner-party at the Embassy that evening, and prepared the good people for some amusement. ‘A pretty English country girl, with some property, no doubt,’ she said. ‘A cottage ornée, most likely, and some fields about it; but her aunt talks as if she were heiress to a Grand Duke. She has come abroad to improve her mind before she comes of age.’
‘And when she goes back there will be a grand assemblage of the tenantry, no doubt, and triumphal arches, and all the rest of it,’ said another of the fine people.