The Cardinals Snuff-Box | Page 2

of solicitude.
Peter's wits were in confusion; but he must answer her. An automatic
second-self, summoned by the emergency, answered for him.
"I think one might safely call it altogether good."
"Oh--?" she exclaimed.
Her eyebrows went up again, but now they expressed a certain
whimsical surprise. She threw back her head, and regarded the prospect

critically.
"It is not, then, too spectacular, too violent?" she wondered, returning
her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion.
"Not too much like a decor de theatre?"
"One should judge it," his automatic second-self submitted, "with some
leniency. It is, after all, only unaided Nature."
A spark flickered in her eyes, while she appeared to ponder. (But I am
not sure whether she was pondering the speech or its speaker.)
"Really?" she said, in the end. "Did did Nature build the villas, and
plant the cornfields?"
But his automatic second-self was on its mettle.
"Yes," it asserted boldly; "the kind of men who build villas and plant
cornfields must be classified as natural forces."
She gave a light little laugh--and again appeared to ponder for a
moment.
Then, with another gracious inclination of the head, and an
interrogative brightening of the eyes, "Mr. Marchdale no doubt?" she
hazarded.
Peter bowed.
"I am very glad if, on the whole, you like our little effect," she went on,
glancing in the direction of Monte Sfiorito. "I" --there was the briefest
suspension--"I am your landlady."
For a third time Peter bowed, a rather more elaborate bow than his
earlier ones, a bow of respectful enlightenment, of feudal homage.
"You arrived this afternoon?" she conjectured.
"By the five-twenty-five from Bergamo," said he.

"A very convenient train," she remarked; and then, in the pleasantest
manner, whereby the unusual mode of valediction was carried off,
"Good evening."
"Good evening," responded Peter, and accomplished his fourth bow.
She moved away from the river, up the smooth lawns, between the
trees, towards Castel Ventirose, a flitting whiteness amid the
surrounding green.
Peter stood still, looking after her.
But when she was out of sight, he sank back upon his rustic bench, like
a man exhausted, and breathed a prodigious sigh. He was absurdly pale.
All the same, clenching his fists, and softly pounding the table with
them, he muttered exultantly, between his teeth, "What luck! What
incredible luck! It's she--it's she, as I 'm a heathen. Oh, what
supernatural luck!"

III
Old Marietta--the bravest of small figures, in her neat black-and-white
peasant dress, with her silver ornaments, and her red silk coif and
apron--came for the coffee things.
But at sight of Peter, she abruptly halted. She struck an attitude of
alarm. She fixed him with her fiery little black eyes.
"The Signorino is not well!" she cried, in the tones of one launching a
denunciation.
Peter roused himself.
"Er--yes--I 'm pretty well, thank you," he reassured her. "I --I 'm only
dying," he added, sweetly, after an instant's hesitation.
"Dying--!" echoed Marietta, wild, aghast.

"Ah, but you can save my life--you come in the very nick of time," he
said. "I'm dying of curiosity--dying to know something that you can tell
me."
Her stare dissolved, her attitude relaxed. She smiled--relief, rebuke. She
shook her finger at him.
"Ah, the Signorino gave me a fine fright," she said.
"A thousand regrets," said Peter. "Now be a succouring angel, and
make a clean breast of it. Who is my landlady?"
Marietta drew back a little. Her brown old visage wrinkled up,
perplexed.
"Who is the Signorino's landlady?" she repeated.
"Ang," said he, imitating the characteristic nasalised eh of Italian
affirmation, and accompanying it by the characteristic Italian jerk of the
head.
Marietta eyed him, still perplexed--even (one might have fancied) a bit
suspicious.
"But is it not in the Signorino's lease?" she asked, with caution.
"Of course it is," said he. "That's just the point. Who is she?"
"But if it is in your lease!" she expostulated.
"All the more reason why you should make no secret of it," he argued
plausibly. "Come! Out with it! Who is my landlady?"
Marietta exchanged a glance with heaven.
"The Signorino's landlady is the Duchessa di Santangiolo," she
answered, in accents of resignation.
But then the name seemed to stimulate her; and she went on "She lives

there--at Castel Ventirose." Marietta pointed towards the castle. "She
owns all, all this country, all these houses --all, all." Marietta joined her
brown old hands together, and separated them, like a swimmer, in a
gesture that swept the horizon. Her eyes snapped.
"All Lombardy?" said Peter, without emotion.
Marietta stared again.
"All Lombardy? Mache!" was her scornful remonstrance. "Nobody
owns all Lombardy. All these lands, these houses."
"Who is she?" Peter asked.
Marietta's eyes blinked, in stupefaction before such stupidity.
"But I have just