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Foss, who had been talking of the Carnival now beginning, telling Aurora about corsi and coriandoli of the past as compared with the poor remnants of these customs, and describing the still undiminished glories of a veglione, perceiving finally that the usually merry lady was on her best behavior to the point of almost complete taciturnity, from necessity addressed herself more directly to Miss Seymour, who shared the sofa with her; and from talking of veglioni the two slid into talking of Florentine affairs more personal.
She did not reply, and he continued: "The fact is, I don't think I behaved very well. I abused your kindness to Miss Graham." "Abused my kindness to Miss Graham?" "Yes. When you allowed her to dance at the veglione, I ought to have considered that you were stretching a point. I ought to have taken her back to you very soon, instead of tempting her to go and walk with me in the corridor."
Guerra, but I was too much afraid you'd recognize me; you're so sharp, and, then, you're the one most particularly who has heard me talk with my English accent, which I put on on the night of the veglione so as not to be known." "Your English accent? That explains." "What?" "Your English accent is a caricature of Antonia's."
A lady whose friendship had latterly since the night of the veglione, in fact taken on the glow of roses and the warmth of wine, had taken it into her charming head to be jealous, fantastically, of Mrs. Hawthorne.
That was true; they had passed so long a time in the shop that they did not feel justified in seriously attempting to beat down the price of their dresses. They took them at the first price. The woman said with reason that it was Carnival, and she could get her price for the things. They went to the veglione at eleven, the ladies calling for Colville, as before, in Mrs. Bowen's carriage.
Colville sat musing upon this phase of Americanism, as he had upon many others. At last he broke the silence they had both let fall, far away from the topic they had touched. "Well," he asked, "how did you enjoy the veglione?" "Oh, I'm too old to go to such places for pleasure," said the minister simply.
When Colville went to the ladies with news of the veglione, he found that they had already heard of it. "Should you like to go?" he asked Mrs. Bowen. "I don't know. What do you think?" she asked in turn. "Oh, it's for you to do the thinking. I only know what I want." Imogene said nothing, while she watched the internal debate as it expressed itself in Mrs. Bowen's face.
While he had been tying on his white cravat before the glass in preparation for the veglione, it had dawned on him, to his surprise and glimmering relief, that he felt something resembling pleasure in the prospect of the confused and promiscuous affair he was enlisted for.
She did not answer, and as they wound up and down through the other orbing couples, he remembered the veglione of seventeen years before, when he had dreamed through the waltz with the girl who jilted him; she was very docile and submissive that night; he believed afterward that if he had spoken frankly then, she would not have refused him.
A prudent woman does not do an imprudent thing by halves. Effie was to be allowed to go to the veglione too, and she went with them to the shop where they were to hire their dominoes. It would be so much more fun, Mrs. Bowen said, to choose the dresses in the shop than to have them sent home for you to look at. Effie was to be in black; Imogene was to have a light blue domino, and Mrs.
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