“No people are easy to please,” Madame replied, putting out the lights with a sharp twist, as if she disliked them. “And all are unpleasant when they are not pleased. I do not say the French are more unpleasant than the others. They know what they are about and they don’t ask for the moon and expect to get it for two sous, but what they ask for--that they do expect to get no matter what it costs others that they should have it. In general, I find the French have very little heart. I have no complaint to make against them. They are orderly, they do not waste time, they have the sense of how to behave. But I find it is better to expect nothing from them, and to remain independent. Is there anything further you require, Mademoiselle?”
Rose thanked her again and turned thoughtfully away. Madame, with the last switch in her hand, looked curiously after her. “The English,” she said to herself, “are not practical. Nevertheless, Madame de Brenteuil is quite wrong about them. They mean no harm. The whole family Pinsent walks about with its eyes shut, as innocent as the newly baptized. They are a race of mystics without manners. It is what comes of a meat breakfast so early in the morning. The senses become clogged. I must not forget to remind Alfonso that the father Pinsent wants bacon with his eggs.”
CHAPTER VII
They had been married a week--a tremulous, ecstatic, amazing week.
It seemed to Rose made up of all the laughing colors of the sea.
They were surrounded by the sea, clear and limpid as a shallow pool, the great deep bay gleamed and shone about them.
Out of it the Islands rose like flowers. Capri uneven, wild and blue, Ischia tulip-shaped and tall--Posilippo and its attendant isles like a fallen spray of blossoms; and in Capri itself the whole spring lay bare to the sun.
The South was like Léon--it was beautiful, but it was strange.
On their first evening they had driven swiftly up the hillside; the air was cold and keen; the small mountain ponies galloped through the quick-falling darkness and just for a moment a breath of fear touched the triumphant bride.
She longed for something familiar, something that wasn’t even beautiful, but to which she had grown accustomed. She didn’t put it to herself quite like that--she only wished she hadn’t had to leave her fox terrier at home.