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Updated: May 4, 2025
At once." "Bembo," Gheta demanded, "duty who's that in the little carriage with the bells bowed over the horses?" He leaned out over the grille, his beady alert gaze sweeping the way below. "Litolff," he pronounced without a moment's hesitation "a Russian swell. The girl with him is " He stopped with a side glance at Lavinia, a slight shrug.
Gheta was gazing at her so crossly that she took a sip of Mantegazza's brandy; it burned her throat cruelly, but she concealed the choking with a smile of high bravado. After dinner they progressed to a drawing-room that filled an entire end of the villa; it lay three steps below the hall, the imposing walls and floor covered with tapestries and richly dark rugs.
Gheta Sanviano turned and saw Lavinia approaching, and the elder's face, always pale, grew suddenly chalky; it was drawn, and the wrinkles, carefully treated with paste, became visible about her eyes. Her hands shook a little as she took a step forward. "What does this mean, Lavinia?" she demanded. "Why did I know nothing about that dress?"
Gheta, fully dressed, was prostrate, face down, upon her bed, shaken by a strangled sobbing that at intervals rose to a thin hysterical scream. The Marchesa Sanviano, still in her traveling suit and close-fitting black hat, sat by her elder daughter's side, trying vainly to calm the tumult.
It was her opinion that Gheta was very silly to show such indifference to Cesare Orsi.... Suddenly she longed to have men not fat and good-natured like the Neapolitan banker, but austere and romantic in love with her. She clasped her hands to her fine young breast and a delicate color stained her cheeks. She stood very straight and her breathing quickened through parted lips.
That latter fact struck her forcibly. His face was no more mutable than a mask of metal. Its stark rigidity sent a cold tremor to her heart. "And," she went on impetuously, "since Gheta said that, I'll tell you really about this necklace: Cesare gave it to her because he was sorry for her; because he thought that perhaps he had misled her. He spoke of it to me first."
Lavinia agreed with her father that Gheta was a fool. She must be thirty, the younger suddenly realized. Bembo was growing hysterical from the tea and his own shrill anecdotes. He resembled a grotesque performing bird with a large beak. Lavinia's mind returned to the silent dark man who had passed in a cab.
The Sanvianos had only a landaulet, no longer in its first condition; and Lavinia wondered why Gheta, who adored ease, had been so long in securing for herself such comforts as Orsi's victoria. They swept smoothly on rubber tires into the Lungarno and rapidly approached her home.
At least then she would have some one with whom to recall the pleasant trifles of past years. She would have liked to ask Anna Mantegazza, too; but this she knew was impossible Gheta had not forgiven Anna for her part on the night that had resulted in Orsi's proposal for Lavinia. She wondered, more obscurely, whether Abrego y Mochales was still in Florence.
The coffee was on when the elder sister said: "I had a card from the Grand Hotel a while ago; Abrego y Mochales is there." "And there," Orsi put in promptly, "I hope he'll stay, or sail for Spain. I don't want the clown about here." Gheta turned. "But you will regret that," she addressed Lavinia; "you always found him so fascinating."
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