The thunder crashed, roared, reverberated, like the toppling of great edifices. The lightning tore through the black cloud-canopy in long blinding zig-zags. The wind moaned, howled, hooted--and the square chamber where Peter stood shook and rattled under its buffetings, and was full of the chill and the smell of it. Really the whole thing was splendid.

His garden-paths ran with muddy brooklets; the high-road beyond his hedge was transformed to a shallow torrent.... And, just at that moment, looking off along the highroad, he saw something that brought his heart into his throat.

Three figures were hurrying down it, half-drowned in the rain--the d.u.c.h.essa di Santangiolo, Emilia Manfredi, and a priest.

In a twinkling, Peter, bareheaded, was at his gate.

"Come in--come in," he called.

"We are simply drenched--we shall inundate your house," the d.u.c.h.essa said, as he showed them into his sitting-room.

They were indeed dripping with water, soiled to their knees with mud.

"Good heavens!" gasped Peter, stupid. "How were you ever out in such a downpour?"

She smiled, rather forlornly.

"No one told us that it was going to rain, and we were off for a good long walk--for pleasure."

"You must be wet to the bone--you must be perishing with cold," he cried, looking from one to another.

"Yes, I daresay we are perishing with cold," she admitted.

"And I have no means of offering you a fire--there are no fireplaces,"

he groaned, with a gesture round the bleak Italian room, to certify their absence.

"Is n't there a kitchen?" asked the d.u.c.h.essa, a faint spark of raillery kindling amid the forlornness of her smile.

Peter threw up his hands.

"I had lost my head. The kitchen, of course. I 'll tell Marietta to light a fire."

He excused himself, and sought out Marietta. He found her in her housekeeper's room, on her knees, saying her rosary, in obvious terror.

I 'm afraid he interrupted her orisons somewhat brusquely.

"Will you be so good as to start a rousing fire in the kitchen--as quickly as ever it can be done?"

And he rejoined his guests.

"If you will come this way--" he said.

Marietta had a fire of logs and pine-cones blazing in no time. She courtesied low to the d.u.c.h.essa, lower still to the priest--in fact, Peter was n't sure that she did n't genuflect before him, while he made a rapid movement with his hand over her head: the Sign of the Cross, perhaps.

He was a little, una.s.suming-looking, white haired priest, with a remarkably clever, humorous, kindly face; and he wore a remarkably shabby ca.s.sock. The d.u.c.h.essa's chaplain, Peter supposed. How should it occur to him that this was Cardinal Udeschini? Do Cardinals (in one's antecedent notion of them) wear shabby ca.s.socks, and look humorous and una.s.suming? Do they go tramping about the country in the rain, attended by no retinue save a woman and a fourteen-year-old girl? And are they little men--in one's antecedent notion? True, his shabby ca.s.sock had red b.u.t.tons, and there was a red sash round his waist, and a big amethyst glittered in a setting of pale gold on his annular finger. But Peter was not sufficiently versed in fashions canonical, to recognise the meaning of these insignia.

How, on the other hand, should it occur to the d.u.c.h.essa that Peter needed enlightenment? At all events, she said to him, "Let me introduce you;" and then, to the priest, "Let me present Mr. Marchdale--of whom you have heard before now."

The white-haired old man smiled sweetly into Peter's eyes, and gave him a slender, sensitive old hand.

"E cattivo vento che non e buono per qualcuno--debbo a questa burrasca la pregustazione d' un piacere," he said, with a mingling of ceremonious politeness and sunny geniality that was of his age and race.

Peter--instinctively--he could not have told why--put a good deal more deference into his bow, than men of his age and race commonly put into their bows, and murmured something about "grand' onore."

Marietta placed a row of chairs before the raised stone hearth, and afterwards, at her master's request, busied herself preparing tea.

"But I think you would all be wise to take a little brandy first," Peter suggested. "It is my despair that I am not able to provide you with a change of raiment. Brandy will be the best subst.i.tute, perhaps."

The old priest laughed, and put his hand upon the shoulder of Emilia.

"You have spared this young lady an embarra.s.sing avowal. Brandy is exactly what she was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her courage to the point of asking for."

"Oh, no!" protested Emilia, in a deep Italian voice, with pa.s.sionate seriousness.

But Peter fetched a decanter, and poured brandy for everyone.

"I drink to your health--c'est bien le cas de le dire. I hope you will not have caught your deaths of cold," he said.

"Oh, we are quite warm now," said the d.u.c.h.essa. "We are snug in an ingle on Mount Ararat."

"Our wetting will have done us good--it will make us grow. You and I will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?" said the priest.

A lively colour had come into the d.u.c.h.essa's cheeks; her eyes seemed unusually bright. Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides, and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets. It was dark in the kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta's copper pots and pans. The rain pattered l.u.s.tily without; the wind wailed in the chimney; the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed. And Peter looked at the d.u.c.h.essa--and blessed the elements. To see her seated there, in her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray--it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm. And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.

"I wonder," she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at him, "whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my hat--because it's a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling down my neck."

His joy needed but this culmination that she should take off her hat!

"Oh, I beg of you--" he returned fervently.

"You had better take yours off too, Emilia," said the d.u.c.h.essa.

"Admire masculine foresight," said the priest. "I took mine off when I came in."

"Let me hang them up," said Peter.

It was wonderful to hold her hat in his hand--it was like holding a part of herself. He brushed it surrept.i.tiously against his face, as he hung it up. Its fragrance--which met him like an answering caress, almost--did not lessen his emotion.

Then Marietta brought the tea, with bread-and-b.u.t.ter, and toast, and cakes, and pretty blue china cups and saucers, and silver that glittered in the firelight.

"Will you do me the honour of pouring the tea?" Peter asked the d.u.c.h.essa.

So she poured the tea, and Peter pa.s.sed it. As he stood close to her, to take it--oh, but his heart beat, believe me! And once, when she was giving him a cup, the warm tips of her fingers lightly touched his hand.

Believe me, the touch had its effect. And always there was that heady fragrance in the air, like a mysterious little voice, singing secrets.

"I wonder," the old priest said, "why tea is not more generally drunk by us Italians. I never taste it without resolving to acquire the habit. I remember, when I was a child, our mothers used to keep it as a medicine; and you could only buy it at the chemists' shops."

"It's coming in, you know, at Rome--among the Whites," said the d.u.c.h.essa.

"Among the Whites!" cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet.