‘Let us go and eat Milo’s red mullets,’ she said now.
‘Milo? Is that the cook? Can he do a bouillabaisse, I wonder?’ he replied.
Their chef had been taken ill, as the train had touched Bordighera, and their agent had hastily supplied his place so far as it is ever possible to supply that of a great and almost perfect creature experienced in all the peculiarities and caprices in taste of those to whom his art is consecrated.
The Princess took no notice of her lord’s blunder; indeed, she seldom answered his remarks at any time; she drew her primrose satin and soft muslin over the sill of the French window, and seated herself at an oval table, gay with fine china, with flowers and fruit, and with a Venice point lace border to its table cloth, which was strewn with Parma violets and the petals of orange-blossoms. She had Geraldine on her right hand and her back to the light. She had an ermine bag holding a silver globe of warm water for her feet, and a chair that was the perfection of ease. The dining-room was small, but very pretty, with game and autumn flowers painted on its panels, and shutters, with hangings of olive velvet and cornices of dead gold, and on the ceiling a hunting scene of Fontainebleau à la Henri IV.
She began to think seriously that after all La Jacquemerille would do very well for the winter. It was utterly absurd, to be sure, outside, but it was comfortable within; and, indeed, had considerable taste displayed in it, the American having wisely mistrusted his own tendencies and left the whole arrangement to French artists, who had robbed him ruthlessly, but who had made each of his apartments as perfect in its way as a Karl Theodor plate.
‘I think I shall buy it,’ said the Princess to her companions; indifferent to her own inconsistencies.
‘Wait a little,’ said Lady Brancepeth. ‘Don’t rush from hatred to adoration. There may be all sorts of things the matter with the drains. The calorifères may be wrong. The cellars may be damp. The windows may rattle. The kitchens may be too far or too near. At the end of the winter you will know all its defects and all its virtues. Houses are like friendships, there is hardly one in a thousand worth a long lease.’
‘Wilkes is always cynical,’ said her brother.
‘And nobody is a stauncher friend,’ said the Princess. ‘Why will she make herself out a cynic?’
‘A cynic? Because I am prudent?’ said Lady Brancepeth. ‘If you sigh all the winter because the house is not yours you will enjoy it. If you buy it you will discover that it is uninhabitable at once.’