“It was here Lucullus gave his famous supper,” Isabel said, glancing back at the gardens. “Was that what is called the most costly supper ever given? I forget.”
Bianca clasped the Signora’s arm and whispered against her shoulder: “We know a costlier one, don’t we?”
“Speak, darling!” was the answering whisper.
“Where the Host gave himself, and made the feast eternal.”
After a few minutes they looked round to find the drive almost deserted, and, entering their carriage, drove slowly homeward, making a few little turns in the neighborhood to familiarize the new-comers with the location of the house. The Ave Maria was ringing from all the belfries, great and small, from
storied campanile, and little arches set against the sky; workmen and workwomen were going homeward, and windows were everywhere being shut on the beautiful twilight, whose air the Italians so fear.
They went up to the sala, and, albeit with a sigh, shut out the west with its crescent now triumphant, and all the sweetness of orange and jasmine flowers, and all the twitter of subsiding birds.
“I think,” the Signora said, “that the Roman past wishes, to monopolize the Roman nights, and that the unhealthy air we fear is nothing but the breath of ghosts who do not desire our company out of doors. But it’s a pity, besides being very disagreeable of them.”
Annunciata brought in a lamp, and said “Buona sera!” in setting it down.
“They always wish you buona sera when they bring the lamp, and felice or felicissima notte when they leave you for the night,” the Signora said. “Impatient as I am with them sometimes, they constantly conciliate me by some pretty custom. I followed one of these customs this morning—a beautiful one,