Part 20 (2/2)
Caesar repaired to his room.
”I don't mind those people,” he said; ”but if they think I am a man made for entertaining ladies, they are very clever.”
The next day Mme. Dawson talked with Caesar very affably, and Mlle. de Sandoval made a few ironical remarks about his savage ways.
Of all the family Caesar conceived that Mlle. Cadet was the most intelligent. She was a French country girl, very jovial, blond, with a turned-up nose, and on the whole insignificant looking. When she spoke, her voice had certain falsetto inflexions that were very comical.
Mlle. Cadet was on to everything the moment it happened. Caesar asked her jokingly about the people in the hotel, and he was thunderstruck to find that she had discovered in three or four days who all the guests were and where they came from.
Mlle. Cadet also told him that Carminatti had sent an ardent declaration of love to the Sandoval girl the first day he saw her.
”The devil!” exclaimed Caesar. ”What an inflammable Neapolitan it is!
And what did she reply?”
”What would she reply? Nothing.”
”As you are already familiar with everything going on here,” said Caesar, ”I am going to ask you a question: what is the noise in the court every night? I am always thinking of asking somebody.”
”Why, it is charging the acc.u.mulator of the lift,” replied Mlle. Cadet.
”You have relieved me from a terrible doubt which worried me.”
”I have never heard a noise,” said Mlle. de Sandoval, breaking into the conversation.
”That's because your room is on the square,” Caesar answered, ”and the noise is in the court; on the poor side of the house.”
”Pshaw! There is no reason to complain,” remarked Mlle. Cadet, ”if they give us a serenade.”
”Do you consider yourself poor?” Mlle. de Sandoval asked Caesar, disdainfully.
”Yes, I consider myself poor, because I am.”
During the following days Mme. Dawson and her daughters were introduced to the rest of the people in the hotel, and became intimate with them.
The ”Contessina” Brenda and the San Martino girls made friends with the French girls, and the Neapolitan and his gentlemen friends flitted among them all.
The Countess Brenda at first behaved somewhat stiff with Mme. Dawson and her daughters, but later she little by little submitted and permitted them to be her friends.
She introduced the French ladies to the other ladies in the hotel; but doubtless her aristocratic ideas would not allow her to consider Mlle.
Cadet a person worthy to be introduced, for whenever she got to her she acted as if she didn't know her.
The governess, noticing this repeated contempt, would blush at it, and once she murmured, addressing Caesar with tears ready to escape from her eyes:
”That's a nice thing to do! Just because I am poor, I don't think they ought to despise me.”
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