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Updated: May 4, 2025
Anna Mantegazza turned to the younger with a new veiled scrutiny. Her gaze rested for an instant on Orsi and then moved contemplatively to Gheta and Abrego y Mochales. It was evident that her thoughts were very busy; a faint sparkle appeared in her eyes, a fresh vivacity animated her manner.
She must marry as soon as possible." "Thank God, there's Cesare Orsi!" her husband responded. Lavinia was gazing inward at the secretly enshrined image of the Flower of Spain. Gheta Sanviano often passed a night at the Mantegazzas' villa on the Height of Castena, a long mile from the city.
Whatever change had taken place in her looks made absolutely no impression upon the latter; it was clear that he saw no one besides Gheta Sanviano. In the candlelight his face more than ever resembled bronze; his hair was dead-black; above the white linen his head was like a superb effigy of an earlier and different race from the others. It was almost savage in its still austerity.
It was not that her actual condition was unbearable, but only that it was so tragically removed from what she had imagined; she had dreamed of romance, it had been embodied for her eager gaze and she had married Cesare Orsi! Gheta returned the necklace to its box and the dinner progressed in silence.
A maid was putting soft paper in the sleeves of Gheta's ball dress, and Lavinia, finding an unexpected reluctance to proceed with what she had come to say, watched the servant's deft care. "Mochales was here last night," Lavinia finally remarked abruptly "that is he stood on the street and serenaded you." Gheta put her cup down with a clatter. "How charming!" she exclaimed.
Mochales, she decided, must be the handsomest man in existence. His unchanging gravity fascinated her the man's face, his voice, his dignified gestures, were all steeped in a splendid melancholy. "I am a peasant," he said, apparently addressing them all, but with his eyes upon Gheta, "from Estremadura, in the mountains.
The sale was progressing in one of the larger salons, but the crowd circulated in a slow solid undulation through every room. Gheta and Anna Mantegazza had sought the familiar comfortable corner of an entresol, and were seated. Lavinia was standing tensely, with a laboring breast, when Bembo suddenly appeared with the man whom he had called the Flower of Spain.
It was again late afternoon, the daily procession was returning from the Cascine, and Gheta was at the window, looking coldly down. The Marchesa Sanviano was knitting at prodigious speed a shapeless gray garment. They all turned when a servant entered: Signer Orsi wished to see the marchese.
"Lavinia Sanviano!" she spoke aloud, with the extraordinary sensation of addressing, in her reflection, a stranger. She could never, never wear her hair down again, she thought with an odd pang. Gheta invariably took breakfast in her room. It was a larger chamber by far than Lavinia's, toward the Via Garibaldi.
"Were you comfortable in my carriage," he demanded, "and fetched home at a smart pace?" Lavinia thanked him. "You are always so quiet," he complained. "I'm certain there's a great deal in that wise young head worth hearing." "Lavinia is still in the schoolroom," Gheta explained brutally. "Yesterday she put up her hair, to-day Anna Mantegazza invites her, and we have an effect."
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