The Villa Bonelli we found to be one of the largest in Ardenza, a huge white mansion, with bright green persiennes, standing back in its own grounds behind a large gate of ornamental iron, the spikes being gilded, in accordance with the usual style in Italy. Velia received her guests in the great salon upholstered in azure silk, and then we wandered through the ground floor of the spacious mansion, passing the smaller salons, and at last strolled out into the garden, where tea was served in the English style under the shadow of the orange trees. Velia had never been able to master English, and, as few of her guests beside myself spoke Italian, her conversation was of necessity limited. Nevertheless, after a five weeks' cruise, resulting in the cramped sensation one usually experiences while yachting, tea-drinking and rambling in that beautiful garden, with its wealth of flowers, were delightful occupations enjoyed by all, even by old Mr. Keppel, whose chief wonder seemed to be at the magnificence of the house, which appeared to be almost entirely constructed of marble. The mosaic floors, too, were splendid, worked in dark green and white, in imitation of those in the Thermæ Antoninianæ at Rome. The Bonellis were an ancient family, one of the few Florentine nobles who were still wealthy. Their ancestral castello was above Pracchia in the Apennines, between Florence and Bologna, and Velia had several times since her marriage given me pressing invitations to stay with her there.
At the convent we had always been close friends. She was the daughter of the Marchese Palidoro of Ancona, and once I had spent the Easter vacation with her at her home on the Adriatic shore. Ulrica and the others found her a charming little woman, and, of course, admired the two-year-old little Count, who was brought down from his kingdom in the nursery, to be kissed and admired by us.
CHAPTER XVI
DISCUSSES SEVERAL MATTERS OF MOMENT
The men drank Marsala—always offered in the afternoon in an Italian house—and smoked in the garden, while we women wandered wherever we liked. Those of my companions who had not before seen the interior of an Italian villa were interested in everything, even to the culinary arrangements, so different from those in England. The Italian cook makes his dishes over some half-a-dozen small charcoal fires about the size of one's hand, which he keeps burning by a kind of rush fire-screen, the English grate being unknown.
We had been there a couple of hours, and to all of us the change had been pleasant after so long a spell at sea. Velia was sitting apart in the garden, and we were chatting, she telling me of the perfect tranquillity of her married life. Rino was, she declared, a model husband, and she was perfectly happy; indeed, her life was a realisation of those dreams that we both used to have long ago in the old neglected garden of the convent, when we walked together hand-in-hand at sundown.
She recalled those days to me—days when I, in my childish ignorance, believed the world outside to be filled with pleasant things. We had not met since we had parted at the convent, she to enter Florentine society and to marry, and I to drift about the world in search of a husband.
"Suor Teresa's counsels were so very true," she said to me, as we recalled the grey-eyed Sister who had been our foster-mother. "Haven't you found them so, just as I have, even though you have lived in England, your cold, undemonstrative England, and I here, in Italia?"
"Suor Teresa gave us so much good advice. To which of her precepts do you refer?" I asked.
"Don't you recollect how she was always saying that, as women, the first thing of importance was always to be content to be inferior to men—inferior in mental power in the same proportion as we are inferior in bodily strength. Facility of movement, aptitude and grace, the bodily frame of woman may possess in a higher degree than that of man; just as in the softer touches of mental and spiritual beauty her character may present a lovelier aspect than his. Yet the woman will find, Suor Teresa used to say, that she is by nature endowed with peculiar faculties—with a quickness of perception, facility of adaptation, and acuteness of feeling, which fit her especially for the part she has to act in life, and which, at the same time, render her, in a higher degree than man, susceptible both to pain and pleasure. These, according to our good Sister, are our qualifications as mere women."