Inevitable Read Free Page B

a great rustle of material. All eyes turned from the aesthetic ladies towards this newcomer. It was immediately obvious that she was American, almost too beautiful, too young to be travelling alone, with a smiling self-assurance, as if she were at home, very white, with very lovely dark eyes, teeth like a dentist’s advertisement, her full bust sheathed in mauve linen with silver trimmings full of arabesques, on her heavily permed hair a large mauve hat with a cascade of black ostrich feathers, attached by an over-large paste clasp. Her silkunderskirts rustled at every movement, the plumes waved, the paste glittered. And despite this showy appearance she was like a child, no more than twenty, with a naive look: she immediately addressed Cornélie and Rudyard; said she was tired, had come from Naples, had danced at Prince Cibo’s the night before, that her name was Miss Urania Hope, that her father lived in Chicago. That she had two brothers who, despite papa’s fortune, worked on a ranch way out West, but that she had been brought up like a spoilt child by her father, who nevertheless wanted her to stand on her own feet and so let her travel alone, and wanted to arrange joint outings in the Old World, in “dear old Italy”. She was overjoyed to hear that Cornélie was also travelling alone, and Rudyard teased the ladies about their newfangled notions, and the two baronesses applauded them. Miss Hope took an immediate liking to her Dutch fellow-traveller, but Cornélie, hesitant, gently declined, saying that she was busy and wanted to study in the museums. “My, my, so serious?” inquired Miss Hope respectfully, and the underskirts rustled, the plumes waved and the paste sparkled. She struck Cornélie as a multicoloured butterfly, nimble and unthinking, that was in danger of crashing into the conservatory glass of a confined existence. Though she felt no attraction to the strange creature that looked at the same time like a coquette and a child, she did feel pity, why she did not know. After supper Rudyard suggested a short walk to the two German ladies. The young baroness came over to Cornélie and asked her to join them, to see Rome by moonlight, nearby, around the Villa Medici. She was grateful for the kind words, and was going to put on a hatwhen Miss Hope ran after her.
    “Stay with me in the drawing-room …”
    “I’m going for a walk with the baroness,” replied Cornélie.
    “That German lady?”
    “Yes.”
    “Does she belong to the nobility?”
    “I fancy she does.”
    “Are there many people from the nobility in this
pensione
?” asked Miss Hope eagerly.
    Cornélie laughed.
    “I don’t know. I only arrived here this morning.”
    “I think there are. I’ve heard that there are lots of members of the nobility here. Are you a member of the nobility?”
    “I was!” laughed Cornélie. “But I had to relinquish my title.”
    “What a shame!” cried Miss Hope. “The nobility is so sweet. Do you know what I have? An album of coats-of-arms, of all sorts of families, and another album of samples—silk and brocade of every ball gown of the queen of Italy … Would you like to see it?”
    “I’d love to,” laughed Cornélie. “But now I must put my hat on.”
    She went off and returned in her hat and cape: the German ladies and Rudyard were already waiting in the vestibule and asked why she was laughing. She told them about the album of samples of the queen’s evening gowns, which caused great merriment.
    “Who is he?” she asked the baroness, as they walked on ahead down the Via Sistina; the young baronessfollowed with Rudyard.
    She found the baroness charming, but was struck, in this German woman from an aristocratic military background, by a cold, cynical view of life not exactly typical of her Berlin environment.
    “I don’t know,” replied the baroness with some indifference. “We travel a lot. At the moment we have no house in Berlin. We want to enjoy our trip. Mr Rudyard is very nice.