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Updated: June 17, 2025
Mary wondered if Miss Bland felt the chill of his manner. They went in to luncheon, and the conversation was of abstract things. If once or twice it seemed that Idina wished to turn the talk to old days which had given memories in common to her and Angelo, the Prince checked her quietly by asking some question about Ireland or America.
"Well!" exclaimed the Princess, after she had tried in vain to attract Mary's notice, "as you're so delightfully occupied, I may as well remove myself and leave you in peace. In less than an hour the fair Idina will be upon us; and I'm going upstairs now to make myself as pretty as Angelo thinks me, to do honour to his cousin.
And after all, Idina's a cold woman." "I wonder?" "Well, anyhow, she was very civil to me and pleasant to Marie, whom I questioned afterward about what Idina had said before I came in. It seems there was nothing but I explained to my wife that there'd been a boy and girl friendship between Idina and me, a sort of cousinly half flirtation, nothing more. And really there was nothing more."
If you really wish to have my opinion on this plot of which you think so much, write the rest out for me, and I'll let you have my verdict." With a swift movement Idina stood up. For once the statue-white face was flushed with a dull, disagreeable red which made her almost ugly. She looked tall and forbidding. "Write!" she repeated in a tone of suppressed fury, deep as a man's.
If Idina disliked her a little, Marie had considered it natural, and had been secretly amused, saying nothing to Angelo. "Miss Bland writes that an American friend of hers has come to stay a day or two only, and she'd like very much to have her meet us and see the villa," Marie announced, glancing through the short letter. "She wants to know if we'd mind asking them to lunch to-day.
If you refuse to tell him, I myself will do it. I will tell him exactly what has happened to-day. And I shall see that the detective whom Idina employed against my wife does not go away before Vanno returns, at any rate without leaving her address.
What do you think of our story so far, Angelo? Isn't it a good plot?" Angelo had been smoking continuously as his cousin talked, sending out little quick puffs of smoke which, to those who knew him, betrayed annoyance. And Idina knew him well. "Do you want me to say what I really think, or to pay you compliments?" he asked. "What you really think, of course."
"Idina Bland" was the name Vanno had ejaculated, on hearing her description; and he had gone on to say that she was a distant relative, who had lived for some time in Rome and at Monte Della Robbia. Certainly Vanno's surprise at hearing of her presence on the Riviera, and her questions concerning the family, had not been of an agreeable nature.
"We must wait a few minutes, Americo," Marie said calmly; but at the same moment Angelo appeared on the fountain terrace, and came quickly up the loggia steps. He shook hands with Idina and greeted Miss Jewett with the grave, pleasant courtesy that was not unlike Vanno's, but colder and more remote, except with those for whom he really cared.
"I've seen her only once, and I don't pretend to be a judge of character. Yet I had a queer thought about her when we met: that she was like a volcano under snow." The Princess did not answer, for the character of Idina being of little importance to her, she had already begun to think of something else. She was comfortably glad to be younger and far, far more attractive than Miss Bland.
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