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It was in much disrepair, but even so seemed to me very cheap. According to the simple Luccan standard, I am rich. I took that first floor for a year, had it repaired, and engaged two servants. My "padrona" inhabited the ground floor. From time to time she allowed me to visit her there. She was the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli, the last of her line. She is the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli-Maltby.
Perhaps this very thing made him irresistible, since we are all born for death and no suitor is so sure of victory as he. "The padrona had not been favorably disposed to him at first, but this mood soon changed, and at New Year's he too was admitted to small evening receptions of intimate friends. He came whenever we invited him, but had no word, no look, scarcely a greeting for our young lady.
She said, "At noon to-day, after the dinner-hour, the padrona gave me three baskets of linen, and told me to carry them to their owners, with the bills which were pinned upon them. I put all three on my head and went away. The first errand was to the apartment of that old colonel of artillery, where I have often been before.
Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would desire to see, tho of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at the geese.
The manservant who answered the door had recommended an Italian lady who took paying guests, and Olive had gone to see her, but her rooms were small, dark and dingy, and they smelt overpoweringly of sandal wood and rancid oil. The shabbily-smart padrona had been voluble and even affectionate. "I am so fond of the English," she said.
The Padrona della case would not give me time to call on my poor Maximilien." "Then, monsieur, your brother is not, like you, in diplomatic employment." "No," said the attache, with a sigh, "the poor fellow sacrificed himself for me. He and my sister Clara have renounced their share of my father's fortune to make an eldest son of me.
I have my reasons. If a life is lost I cannot help it nor can you, Adamo, eh?" She smiles grimly. Adamo smiles too, a stolid smile, and nods. He is greatly relieved. The padrona is not mad, nor will she die. "You may sleep in peace, padrona." With the utmost respect Adamo raises her hand to his lips and kisses it. "Next time ask Adamo to do something more, and he will do it.
Now I want to tell you something something that happened to-night." Gaspare started, looked up quickly, darted at his Padrona a searching glance of inquiry. "What is it?" she said. "Niente!" He kept his eyes on her, staring with a tremendous directness that was essentially southern. And she returned his gaze. "I was with Ruffo this evening.
"If the poor Signora had not been mad she could not have looked at me like that at another, perhaps, but not at me." It seemed as if at last his long reserve was breaking down. He put up his hand to his eyes. "I did not think that my Padrona " He stopped. Artois remembered the face at the window. He grasped Gaspare's hand. "The Signora does not understand," he said.
Then he went away, and sat down under the shadow of the cliff, and let his hands drop down between his knees. The look he had seen in his Padrona's eyes had made him feel terrible. His violent, faithful heart was tormented. He did not analyze he only knew, he only felt. And he suffered horribly. How had his Padrona been able to look at him like that?
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