The Hotel le Roy was even for Rome extraordinarily “black.” Its clientèle was composed of French priests, their sisters, ladies of pronounced age and severity, one or two French families of prehistoric claims, small means and a son at a seminary, and a few Dutch Catholics who were, if anything, blacker than the French, but distinctly pleasanter to the English. Black French Catholics do not like English Protestants. The war may have softened this feeling, but this episode took place a year before the war, when the Entente Cordiale was looked upon as a Socialist blunder to be sharply counteracted in private by a studied coldness of manner.
Mrs. Pinsent, whose French the whole family relied upon, did nothing to improve the situation. She said to Madame la Comtesse de Brenteuil, who couldn’t very well help going up in the lift with her, “Isn’t it a pity the Vatican shuts so often for church things? They say we sha’n’t be able to get into the Sistine chapel in Holy Week, and one of my daughters is writing an article on the Sibyls--it’s really most annoying!”
Madame de Brenteuil looked at Mrs. Pinsent as if she were a smut that had fallen on her sleeve; then, with a weary irony, she observed, “Perhaps, Madame, the English do not realize that the Holy Father is a Catholic?” Mrs. Pinsent was eager to reassure her as to Anglo-Saxon intuitions. She said, “Oh, yes--we quite understand his own personal views--but it isn’t as if Rome really belonged to him, is it?”
Fortunately the lift stopped. It was not Madame de Brenteuil’s étage, but she got out.
After this incident no French person in the Le Roy spoke to Mrs. Pinsent or her daughters, so that it was rather difficult for Léon Legier to begin--especially as he was a third cousin to the Comtesse, and lié to almost everybody there. He had made up his mind to begin from the moment that Rose Pinsent dropped a breakfast roll and blushed as she stooped to pick it up.
He had never seen such a blush before on any woman’s face, and any color he had failed to surprise upon a woman’s face he had naturally supposed could not exist.
Apparently it did, for Rose had it. Her blush was as fine in hue as that of a pink tulip and as delicate as a winter cloud at dawn.
It swept up in a wave from her white throat into her pale, silky, fair hair, and the fact that she suddenly discovered Léon was observing her did not tend to decrease her color. Léon Legier made his opportunity that evening in the hall. The porter was explaining to Mrs. Pinsent what time to start for Tivoli the following morning. His English was limited and he altered the train hour to suit the convenience of the foreign tongue. The greater inconvenience of missing the train had not occurred to him until Léon intervened.
Subsequently Léon discovered that almost all the porter’s other information suffered from similar readjustments of language, and he and Mrs. Pinsent sat down in the lounge to revise the day’s excursion. Mrs. Pinsent should, perhaps, have thought of her daughters, but Léon gave her no time to think of her daughters. He focused her attention upon herself. She felt herself young again, almost dangerous; the young man before her apologetic, diffident, with exquisite manners, was so obviously attracted by her and intent on all that she had to tell him, she had not the heart to cut the conversation short. Later on Mr. Pinsent joined them. He was delighted to find another man to talk to in his own tongue, and who was obviously acquainted with the name of Lloyd George.
It fortunately never transpired that Léon had confused the name of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer with that of a horse who had won the Derby.