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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.
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.
But she could not, of course, say a word of what was in her thoughts. She met his admiring gaze with a blank face, conscious of how utterly her exterior belied and hid the actual Lavinia Sanviano. She felt wearily old, sophisticated. In her room, dressing for the evening, she made up her mind that she must have a black dinner gown later she would wear no other shade.
Gheta Sanviano didn't answer, but closed her eyes for a moment in an effort to control the anger that shone in them. The silence deepened to constraint, and then she laughed lightly. "Quite a woman of fashion!" she observed of Lavinia. "Fancy! It's a pity that she must go back to the convent so soon."
From the window of the drawing-room Lavinia Sanviano could see, on the left, the Statue of Garibaldi, where the Corso Regina Maria cut into the Lungarno; on the right, and farther along, the gray-green foliage of the Cascine. Before her the Arno flowed away, sluggish and without a wrinkle or reflection on its turbid surface, into Tuscany.
Gheta's grief and their mother's anxiety at first seemed so foolishly disproportionate to their cause. Then a realization of what such an occurrence meant to Gheta dawned upon her. To an acknowledged beauty like Gheta Sanviano the marks of Time were an absolute tragedy; they threatened her on every plane of her being. "But when " Lavinia began.
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.
But, she reassured herself, there was little danger of that Gheta would never make a sacrifice for emotion; she would be sure of the comfortable material thing, and now more than ever. Anna Mantegazza moved to a piano, which, in the obscurity, she began to play. The notes rose deliberate and melodious. Gheta Sanviano told Orsi: "That's Iris.
A small man in correct English clothes, with a pointed bald head and a heavy nose, entered impulsively. "It's Bembo," Lavinia announced flatly. "Of course it's Bembo," he echoed vivaciously. "Who's more faithful to the Casa Sanviano " "At tea time," Lavinia interrupted. "Lavinia," her sister said sharply, "don't be impertinent.
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