Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/272

 and made a flowery speech, of which she understood not a word. Then his true purpose was revealed. He went past her and laid them at the very feet of the horrid statue. At the same moment, one of the workmen, the bronze-chested Giovanni whose physique had caught the wandering eye of the Princess d'Orobelli, said something to him, and he in his turn began to gibber at the now completely distracted seeress. It appeared that the arrival of Pietro gave them fresh courage. She saw that they intended to prevent her by force from carrying out her plan of doing away with the obscene thing. She was the tenant of this property. She intended to do with it as she pleased. Her fleshy nostrils began to distend in an ominous way. Italians, so volatile by nature, could not imagine the force of a granddaughter of Transcendentalists moved to anger by a long series of torments. And unlike Miss Fosdick, they had never witnessed the full fury of one of her tantrums.

But at the crucial moment there appeared from the opposite end of the garden a whole procession of goats which had faithfully followed Pietro up the stony hill. At the very end of the procession, emerging from the tunnel of greenery, appeared Mr. Winnery, nattily dressed for courting in a checked suit, a new pearl grey hat and lemon yellow gloves.

Mr. Winnery, entering into the cool dark garden, was overcome, as he had been once before, by the certainty that he had lost his mind. He was aware