"It has a pleasant site, I'll not deny," said Lady Blanchemain. "But don't you find it a trifle far away? And a bit up-hill? I'm staying at the Victoria at Roccadoro, and it took me an hour and a half to drive here."
"But since," said John, with a flattering glance, "since you are here, I have no further reason to deplore its farawayness. So few places are far away, in these times and climes," he added, on a note of melancholy, as one to whom all climes and times were known.
"Hum!" said Lady Blanchemain, matter-of-fact. "Have you been here long?"
"Let me see," John answered. "To-day is the 23rd of April. I arrived here—I offer the fact for what it may be worth—on the Feast of All Fools."
"Absit omen," cried she. "And you intend to stay?"
"Oh, I'm at least wise enough not to fetter myself with intentions," answered John.
She looked about, calculating, estimating.
"I suppose it costs you the very eyes of your head?" she asked.
John giggled.
"Guess what it costs—I give it to you in a thousand."
She continued her survey, brought it to a period.
"A billion a week," she said, with finality. John exulted.
"It costs me," he told her, "six francs fifty a day—wine included."
"What!" cried she, mistrusting her ears.
"Yes," said he.
"Fudge!" said she, not to be caught with chaff.
"It sounds like a traveller's tale, I know; but that's so often the bother with the truth," said he. "Truth is under no obligation to be vraisemblable. I'm here en pension."
Lady Blanchemain sniffed.
"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, her nose in the air.
"Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I board at the presbytery."
"Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?"
"For six francs fifty a day—wine included," chuckled John.
"Wine, and apparently the unhindered enjoyment of—the whole blessed thing," supplemented she, with a reminder of his comprehensive gesture.
"Yes—the run of the house and garden, the freedom of the hills and valley."
"I understand," she said, and was mute for a space, readjusting her impressions. "I had supposed," she went on at last, "from the handsome way in which you snubbed that creature in shoulder-knots, and proceeded to do the honours of the place, that you were little less than its proprietor."
"Well, and so I could almost feel I am," laughed John. "I'm alone here—there's none my sway to dispute. And as for the creature in shoulder-knots, what becomes of the rights of man or the bases of civil society, if you can't snub a creature whom you regularly tip? For five francs a week the creature in shoulder-knots cleans my boots (indifferent well), brushes my clothes, runs my errands (indifferent slow)—and swallows my snubs as if they were polenta."
"And tries to shoo intrusive trippers from your threshold—and gets an extra plateful for his pains," laughed the lady. "Where," she asked, "does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster keep himself?"
"In Vienna, I believe. Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes to Sant' Alessina."
"Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head complimented him upon it.
"Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish.
She regarded him doubtfully.
"Wouldn't you find yourself in a slightly difficult position, if the Prince or his family should suddenly turn up?" she suggested.
"I? Why?" asked John, his blue eyes blank.
"A young man boarding with the parroco for six francs a day—" she began.
"Six francs fifty, please," he gently interposed.
"Make it seven if you like," her ladyship largely conceded. "Wouldn't your position be slightly false? Would they quite realize who you were?"
"What could that possibly matter? wondered John, eyes blanker still.
"I could conceive occasions in which it might matter furiously," said she. "Foreigners can't with half an eye distinguish amongst us, as we ourselves can; and Austrians have such oddly exalted notions. You wouldn't like to be mistaken for Mr. Snooks?"
"I don't know," John reflected, vistas opening before him. "It might be rather a lark."
"Whrrr!" said Lady Blanchemain, fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief. Then she eyed him suspiciously. "You're hiding the nine million other causes up your sleeve. It isn't merely the 'whole blessed thing' that's keeping an eaglet of your feather alone in an improbable nest like this—it's some one particular thing. In my time," she sighed, "it would have been a woman."
"And no wonder," riposted John, with a flowery bow.
"You're very good—but you confuse the issue," said she. "In my time the world was young and romantic. In this age of prose and prudence—is it a woman?"
"The world is still, is always, young and romantic," said John, sententious. "I can't admit that an age of prose and prudence is possible. The poetry of earth is never dead, and no more is its folly. The world is always romantic, if you have the three gifts needful to make it so."
"Is it a woman?" repeated Lady Blanchemain.
"And the three gifts are," said he, "Faith, and the sense of Beauty, and the sense of Humour."
"And I should have thought, an attractive member of the opposite sex," said she. "Is it a woman?"
"Well," he at last replied, appearing to take counsel with himself, "I don't know why I should forbid myself the relief of owning up to you that in a sense it is."
"Hurray!" cried she, moving in her seat, agog, as one who scented her pet diversion. "A love affair! I'll be your confidante. Tell me all about it."
"Yes, in a sense, a love affair," he confessed.
"Good—excellent," she approved. "But—but what do you mean by 'in a sense'?"
"Ah," said he, darkly nodding, "I mean whole worlds by that."
"I don't understand," said she, her face prepared to fall.
"It isn't one woman—it's a score, a century, of the dear things," he announced.
Her face fell. "Oh—?" she faltered.
"It's a love affair with a type," he explained.
She frowned upon him. "A love affair with a type—?"
"Yes," said he.
She shook her head. "I give you up. In one breath you speak like a Mohammedan, in the next like—I don't know what."
"With these," said John, his band stretched towards the wall. "With the type of the Quattrocento."
He got upon his feet, and moved from picture to picture; and a fire, half indeed of mischief; but half it may be of real enthusiasm, glimmered in his eyes.
"With these lost ladies of old years; these soft-coloured shadows,