Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/312

300 invitation. Yet if I were his nobility, Count Guarino Guarini, not the least of my pleasant moments would be that in which I could say, 'I have a noble lady to wife, for she honours me as I have honoured her.'"

That was a very dextrous remark, vastly pleasing to the Countess. She kissed the speaker then and there, wrote her letter hot-head, talked about it all that day, and worked herself into such a fever of curiosity that she cut short her villeggiatura by six weeks, so as the sooner to see the girl who could inspire her with such admirable ideas of her own magnanimity. She even grew quite enthusiastic upon her husband's account, almost sentimental about him. This much the wily Angioletto (who did not study character for nothing) had allowed for in his calculations.

It is by no means certain that the Countess was as wise as her guide. The facts which induced the letter were these. Guarini had chanced upon an early mass at San Cristoforo and Bellaroba kneeling at her prayers. She, all unconscious of any presence but her own and her Saviour's, was looking up to the Mother who had made Him so, dim-eyed, and smiling rather tenderly. Her lips framed petitions for the coming home of Angioletto. She had hooded her head as he commanded, and it became her as he had foreseen. With her added cares of wifely duty this gave a sober look to her untameable childish bloom; she was almost a business-like beauty now. To Guarino the pathetic appealed more nearly; to him she seemed a pretty nun, a wood-bird caged.