“Oh no, indeed!” she answered. “The young gentlemen used to find out whether I was going, and came for me with a hack, and generally, if the weather was good, we walked home.”
“That’s the way we still do in Des Vaches. Sometimes, as a tremendous joke, the ladies come for us in leap-year. How do you go to balls in Buffalo, Miss Graham? Or, no; I withdraw the embarrassing question.” Some gleams from the street lamps, as they drove along, struck in through the carriage windows, and flitted over the ladies’ faces and were gone again. “Ah! this is very trying. Couldn’t you stop him at the next corner, and let me see how radiant you ladies really are? I may be in very great danger; I’d like to know just how much.”
“It wouldn’t be of any use,” cried the young girl gaily. “We’re all wrapped up, and you couldn’t form any idea of us. You must wait, and let us burst upon you when we come out of the dressing-room at Madame Uccelli’s.”
“But then it may be too late,” he urged. “Is it very far?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bowen. “It’s ridiculously far. It’s outside the Roman Gate. I don’t see why people live at that distance.”
“In order to give the friends you bring the more pleasure of your company, Mrs. Bowen.”
“Ah! that’s very well. But you’re not logical.”
“No,” said Colville; “you can’t be logical and complimentary at the same time. It’s too much to ask. How delicious your flowers are!” The ladies each had a bouquet in her hand, which she was holding in addition to her fan, the edges of her cloak, and the skirt of her train.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bowen; “we are so much obliged to you for them.”
“Why, I sent you no flowers,” said Colville, startled into untimely earnest.
“Didn’t you?” triumphed Mrs. Bowen. “I thought gentlemen always sent flowers to ladies when they were going to a ball with them. They used to, in Columbus.”
“And in Buffalo they always do,” Miss Graham added.
“Ah! they don’t in Des Vaches,” said Colville. They tried to mystify him further about the bouquets; they succeeded in being very gay, and in making themselves laugh a great deal. Mrs. Bowen was even livelier than the young girl.
Her carriage was one of the few private equipages that drove up to Madame Uccelli’s door; most people had not even come in a remise, but, after the simple Florentine fashion, had taken the little cabs, which stretched in a long line up and down the way; the horses had let their weary heads drop, and were easing their broken knees by extending their forelegs while they drowsed; the drivers, huddled in their greatcoats, had assembled around the doorway to see the guests alight, with that amiable, unenvious interest of the Italians in the pleasure of others. The deep sky glittered with stars; in the corner of the next villa garden the black plumes of some cypresses blotted out their space among them.
“Isn’t it Florentine?” demanded Mrs. Bowen, giving the hand which Colville offered in helping her out of the carriage a little vivid pressure, full of reminiscence and confident sympathy. A flush of youth warmed his heart; he did not quail even when the porter of the villa intervened between her and her coachman, whom she was telling when to come back, and said that the carriages were ordered for three o’clock.
“Did you ever sit up so late as that in Des Vaches?” asked Miss Graham mischievously.
“Oh yes; I was editor of a morning paper,” he explained. But he did not like the imputation of her question.
Madame Uccelli accepted him most hospitably among her guests when he was presented. She was an American who had returned with her Italian husband to Italy, and had long survived him in the villa which he had built with her money. Such people grow very queer with the lapse of time. Madame Uccelli’s character remained inalienably American, but her manners and customs had become largely Italian; without having learned the language thoroughly, she spoke it very fluently, and its idioms marked her Philadelphia English. Her house was a menagerie of all the nationalities; she was liked in Italian society, and there were many Italians; English-speaking Russians abounded; there were many genuine English, Germans, Scandinavians, Protestant Irish, American Catholics, and then Americans of all kinds. There was a superstition of her exclusiveness among her compatriots, but one really met everyone there sooner or later; she was supposed to be a convert to the religion of her late husband, but no one really knew what religion she was of, probably not even Madame Uccelli herself. One thing you were sure of at her house, and that was a substantial supper; it is the example of such resident foreigners which has corrupted the Florentines, though many native families still hold out against it.
The dancing was just beginning, and the daughter of Madame Uccelli, who spoke both English and Italian much better than her mother, came forward and possessed herself of Miss Graham, after a polite feint of pressing Mrs. Bowen to let her find a partner for her.
Mrs. Bowen cooed a gracious refusal, telling Fanny Uccelli that she knew very well that she never danced now. The girl had not much time for Colville; she welcomed him, but she was full of her business of starting the dance, and she hurried away without asking him whether she should introduce him to some lady for the quadrille that was forming. Her mother, however, asked him if he would not go out and get himself some tea, and she found a lady to go with him to the supper-room. This lady had daughters
