"Papa, what do think? There are a couple of Neapolitan pifferari on the lawn, and I have told them to come round here. You should have seen how delighted they were when I spoke to them in Italian. I knew you would be pleased to hear them play a few of their simple airs. It will seem like old times come back again, will it not?"
"Old times, forsooth!" exclaimed Drelincourt with his most riant air. "You talk, mignonne, as if this were your fiftieth birthday instead of your eighteenth. But where are these vagabonds of yours? I suppose I must submit to having my ears tortured, since you will it so." Then, as the girl turned away, the shadow swept over his face again, and under his breath he murmured: "Rodd--Rodd--whip and spur!--whip and spur!"
Marian had flitted on to the lawn, and was beckoning to the pifferari, who presently came slouching along, and took up a position a little way removed from one of the long windows.
"Poor fellows! Their clothes seem little more than tatters," remarked Marian, as she reëntered the room. "And yet how picturesque they look!"
"And how very far from clean!" Added Walter in a low voice. "It would be a charity to make them a present of a bar of soap--if one could feel sure of their using it."
Then they began to play. The air, although set to waltz time, was a wild and plaintive one, and not at all like conventional dance music.
After listening for a couple of minutes, Marian clapped her hands and cried excitedly: "Papa, don't you remember?"
"Remember what, my dear?"
"The air they are playing. It's called 'La Strega,' which"--with a glance at Walter--"being interpreted for the behoof of illiterate people, means 'The Sorceress.'"
"So kind of you to enlighten my ignorance!" murmured the young man.