"Mia madre..." The long-forgotten words rose from the mirage of the past. He looked down into a wrinkled face: an old, old man in shabby livery. The next moment his hand went out and was held in the shaky clasp of age.
"Mother of all the Saints! Her face!" Tears were in the dim old eyes. "Ahi!—she was a Saint herself. A thousand humble welcomes 'a Lei'! He must forgive this old man who worships his blesséd lady's memory ... God be praised that I see this day..."
"Basta ... Basta!" Vanni checked him as the soft Italian speech flowed on, unintelligible to McTaggart, smiling down at the faithful servant. "The Signor Marchese is tired and would sleep."
The "maestro di casa" effaced himself, leading the way, on tottering feet, through a long suite of rooms, into a corridor lined with statues and Etruscan pottery.
They came at last to narrow stairs, built in the thickness of the wall, mounted these to another passage and paused before a double door.
Within was a bedroom with marble floor and deep-set windows draped with silk. A stove was burning and candles gleamed, but the place felt cheerless and rather damp: magnificent, but strangely bare, the high walls discolored with age.
Another servant appeared with a tray and a steaming tureen of thick red soup. McTaggart welcomed it where he sat at a round table before the stove with sandwiches and fruit arranged in heavy dishes of silver-gilt.
The bread, he thought, tasted sour, but when the man filled his glass with a golden wine, clear and sparkling, he drank it down and his eyes shone.
"What is it?" he asked Vanni—"not champagne?" The lawyer smiled.
"Asti Spumante—The late Marquis was well known for his cellar. And the dried figs and oranges and the goat's milk cheese are from the estate."