CHAPTER III.
SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT!
Signor Graziano's usual week of holiday passed and lengthened into almost two months, and still he stayed on at the villa. The two old ladies were highly delighted.
"At last he has taken my advice!" cried Miss Prunty. "I always told him those premature grey hairs came from late hours and Roman air."
Madame Petrucci shook her head and gave a meaning smile. Her friendship with the signorino had begun when he was a lad and she a charming married woman; like many another friendship, it had begun with a flirtation, and perhaps (who knows?) she thought the flirtation had revived.
As for Goneril, she considered him the most charming old man she had ever known, and liked nothing so much as to go out a walk with him. That, indeed, was one of the signorino's pleasures; he loved to take the young girl all over his gardens and vineyards, talking to her in the amiable, half-petting, half-mocking manner that he had adopted from the first. And twice a week he gave her a music lesson.
"She has a splendid organ!" he would say.
"Vous croyez?" fluted Madame Petrucci with the vilest accent and the most aggravating smile imaginable.
It was the one hobby of the signorino's that she regarded with disrespect.