Part 5 (1/2)

'Just sit down, Gustavo, it makes me nervous to see you standing all the time. I can't be comfortable, you know, unless everybody else is comfortable. Now pay strict attention and see if you can grasp my meaning.'

Gustavo dubiously accepted the edge of the indicated chair; he wished to humour the signore's mood, however incomprehensible that mood might be.

For half an hour he listened with strained attention while the gentleman talked and toyed with the sugar bowl. Amazement, misgiving, amus.e.m.e.nt, daring, flashed in succession across his face; in the end he leaned forward with s.h.i.+ning eyes.

'_Si, si_,' he whispered after a conspiratorial glance over his shoulder, 'I will do it all; you may trust to me.'

The young man rose, removed the sugar bowl, and sauntered on toward the road. Gustavo pocketed the notes and gazed after him.

'_Dio mio_,' he murmured as he set about gathering up the gla.s.ses, 'zese Americans!'

At the gate the young man paused to light another cigarette.

'_Addio_, Gustavo,' he called over his shoulder, '_don't_ forget the earrings!'

CHAPTER IV

The table was set on the terrace; breakfast was served and the company was gathered. Breakfast consisted of the usual caffe-latte, rolls and strained honey, and--since a journey was to the fore and something sustaining needed--a soft-boiled egg apiece. There were four persons present, though there should have been five. The two guests were an Englishman and his wife, whom the chances of travel had brought over night to Valedolmo.

Between them, presiding over the coffee machine, was Mr. Wilder's sister, 'Miss Hazel'--never 'Miss Wilder' except to the butcher and baker. It was the cross of her life, she had always affirmed, that her name was not Mary or Jane or Rebecca. 'Hazel' does well enough when one is eighteen and beautiful, but when one is fifty and no longer beautiful, it is little short of absurd. But if any one at fifty could carry such a name gracefully, it was Miss Hazel Wilder; her fifty years sat as jauntily as Constance's twenty-two. This morning she was very business-like in her short skirt, belted jacket, and green felt Alpine hat with a feather in the side. No one would mistake her for a cyclist or a golfer or a motorist or anything in the world but an Alpine climber; whatever Miss Hazel was or was not, she was always _game_.

Across from Miss Hazel sat her brother in knickerbockers, his Alpine stock at his elbow and also his fan. Since his domicile in Italy, Mr.

Wilder's fan had a.s.sumed the nature of a symbol; he could no more be separated from it than St. Sebastian from his arrows or St. Laurence from his gridiron. At Mr. Wilder's elbow was the empty chair where Constance should have been--she who had insisted on six as a proper breakfast hour, and had grudgingly consented to postpone it till half-past out of deference to her sleepy-headed elders. Her father had finished his egg and hers too, before she appeared, as nonchalant and smiling as if she were out the earliest of all.

'I think you might have waited!' was her greeting from the doorway.

She advanced to the table, saluted in military fas.h.i.+on, dropped a kiss on her father's bald spot, and possessed herself of the empty chair. She too was clad in mountain-climbing costume, in so far as blouse and skirt and leather leggings went, but above her face there fluttered the fluffy white brim of a ruffled sun hat with a bunch of pink rosebuds set over one ear.

'I am sorry not to wear my own Alpine hat, Aunt Hazel; I look so deliciously German in it, but I simply can't afford to burn all the skin off my nose.'

'You can't make us believe that,' said her father. 'The reason is, that Lieutenant di Ferara and Captain Coroloni are going with us to-day, and that this hat is more becoming than the other.'

'It's one reason,' Constance agreed imperturbably, 'but, as I say, I don't wish to burn the skin off my nose, because that is unbecoming too.

You are ungrateful, Dad,' she added as she helped herself to honey with a liberal hand, 'I invited them solely on your account because you like to hear them talk English. Have the donkeys come?'

'The donkeys are at the back door nibbling the buds off the rose bushes.'

'And the driver?'

'Is sitting on the kitchen doorstep drinking coffee and smiling over the top of his cup at Elizabetta. There are two of him.'

'Two! I only ordered one.'

'One is the official driver and the other is a boy whom he has brought along to do the work.'

Constance eyed her father sharply. There was something at once guilty and triumphant about his expression.

'What is it, Dad?' she inquired sternly. 'I suppose he has not got a sash and earrings.'