Page:The Portrait of a Lady (1882).djvu/206

198 198 THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of the place that we are concerned ; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tea ants had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural ; but their func- tion seemed to be less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively cross- barred and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on tip- toe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a row of three of these obstructive apertures one of the several distinct apartments into which the villa was divided, and which were mainly occupied by foreigners of conflicting nationality long resident in Florence a gentleman was seated, in company with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was, however, much less gloomy than my indications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the tangled garden behind ; and the tall iron lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. The place, moreover, was almost laxuriously comfort- able ; it told of habitation being practised as a fine art. It con- tained a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those primitive specimens of pictorial art in frames pedantically rusty, those perverse-looking relics of mediaeval brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. These things were intermingled with articles of modern furni- ture, in which liberal concession had been made to cultivated sensibilities ; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep and well padded, and that much space was occupied by a writ- ing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of London and the nineteenth century. There were books in pro- fusion, and magazines and newspapers, and a few small modern pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room easel, before which, at the moment when we begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the picture in silence. Silence absolute silence had not fallen upon her com- panions ; but their conversation had an appearance of embar- rassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled them- selves in their respective chairs ; their attitude was noticeably provisional, and they evidently wished to emphasise the transi- tory character of their presence. They were plain, comfortable