SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT!

Signor Graziano's usual week of holiday pa.s.sed and lengthened into almost two months, and still he stayed on at the villa. The two old ladies were highly delighted.

"At last he has taken my advice!" cried Miss Prunty. "I always told him those premature gray hairs came from late hours and Roman air."

Madame Petrucci shook her head and gave a meaning smile. Her friendship with the signorino had begun when he was a lad and she a charming married woman; like many another friendship, it had begun with a flirtation, and perhaps (who knows?) she thought the flirtation had revived.

As for Goneril, she considered him the most charming old man she had ever known, and liked nothing so much as to go out a walk with him.

That, indeed, was one of the signorino's pleasures; he loved to take the young girl all over his gardens and vineyards, talking to her in the amiable, half-petting, half-mocking manner that he had adopted from the first; and twice a week he gave her a music lesson.

"She has a splendid organ!" he would say.

"_Vous croyez_?" fluted Madame Petrucci, with the vilest accent and the most aggravating smile imaginable.

It was the one hobby of the signorino's that she regarded with disrespect.

Goneril too was a little bored by the music lesson, but, on the other hand, the walks delighted her.

One day Goneril was out with her friend.

"Are the peasants very much afraid of you, signore?" she asked.

"Am I such a tyrant?" counter-questioned the signorino.

"No; but they are always begging me to ask you things. Angiolino wants to know if he may go for three days to see his uncle at Fiesole."

"Of course."

"But why, then, don't they ask you themselves? Is it they think me so cheeky?"

"Perhaps they think I can refuse you nothing."

"_Che!_ In that case they would ask Madame Petrucci."

Goneril ran on to pick some China roses. The signorino stopped confounded.

"It is impossible!" he cried. "She cannot think I am in love with Giulia! She cannot think I am so old as that!"

The idea seemed horrible to him. He walked on very quickly till he came up to Goneril, who was busy plucking roses in a hedge.

"For whom are those flowers?" he asked.

"Some are for you and some are for Madame Petrucci."

"She is a charming woman, Madame Petrucci."

"A dear old lady," murmured Goneril, much more interested in her posy.

"Old, do you call her?" said the signorino, rather anxiously. "I should scarcely call her that, though of course she is a good deal older than either of us."

"Either of us!" Goneril looked up astounded. Could the signorino have suddenly gone mad?

He blushed a little under his brown skin that had reminded her of a coffee-bean.

"She is a good ten years older than I am," he explained.

"Ah, well, ten years isn't much."

"You don't think so?" he cried, delighted. Who knows? she might not think even thirty too much.

"Not at that age," said Goneril, blandly.

Signor Graziano could think of no reply.

But from that day one might have dated a certain a.s.sumption of youthfulness in his manners. At cards it was always the signorino and Goneril against the two elder ladies; in his conversation, too, it was to the young girl that he constantly appealed, as if she were his natural companion--she, and not his friends of thirty years. Madame Petrucci, always serene and kind, took no notice of these little changes, but they were particularly irritating to Miss Prunty, who was, after all, only four years older than the signorino.

That lady had, indeed, become more than usually sharp and foreboding.

She received the signorino's gay effusions in ominous silence, and would frown darkly while Madame Petrucci petted her "little bird," as she called Goneril. Once, indeed, Miss Prunty was heard to remark that it was tempting Providence to have dealings with a creature whose very name was a synonym for ingrat.i.tude. But the elder lady only smiled and declared that her Gonerilla was charming, delicious, a real sunshine in the house.

"Now I call on you to support me, signorino," she cried one evening, when the three elders sat together in the room, while Goneril watered the roses on the terrace. "Is not my Gonerilla a charming little _bebe_?"

Signor Graziano withdrew his eyes from the window.

"Most charming, certainly, but scarcely such a child. She is seventeen, you know, my dear signora."

"Seventeen! _Santo Dio!_ And what is one at seventeen but an innocent, playful, charming little kitten?"

"You are always right, madame," agreed the signorino, but he looked as if he thought she were very wrong.

"Of course I am right," laughed the little lady. "Come here, my Gonerilla, and hold my skein for me. Signor Graziano is going to charm us with one of his delightful airs."

"I hoped she would sing," faltered the signorino.

"Who? Gonerilla? Nonsense, my friend. She winds silk much better than she sings."

Goneril laughed; she was not at all offended. But Signor Graziano made several mistakes in his playing. At last he left the piano. "I cannot play to-night," he cried. "I am not in the humour. Goneril, will you come and walk with me on the terrace?"

Before the girl could reply Miss Prunty had darted an angry glance at Signor Graziano.

"Good Lord, what fools men are!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "And do you think, now, I'm going to let that girl, who's just getting rid of her malaria, go star-gazing with any old idiot while all the mists are curling out of the valleys?"

"Brigida, my love, you forget yourself," said Madame Petrucci.

"Bah!" cried the signorino. He was evidently out of temper.

The little lady hastened to smooth the troubled waters. "Talking of malaria," she began, in her serenest manner, "I always remember what my dearest Madame Lilli told me. It was at one of Prince Teano's concerts.

You remember, signorino?"