This figure which came and went seemed the principal one of the picture. Every one watched the girl and talked to her. Signora Anna started every time she opened the door.
Even Antonio addressed her.
"Well, Marina, and how are all the sweethearts?" he asked; and added, indicating Regina, "are you satisfied? Which is the prettier, she or Signora Arduina?"
Marina blushed, giggled, ran away, and did not return.
Presently Gaspare rose gravely, threw his napkin over his shoulder, and went in search of her. An altercation was heard in the kitchen. Then Gaspare returned, wrathful and very red.
"Mother, the mutton is burnt!" he announced tragically; "you must go and see after it."
The old lady groaned, got up, went out, came back—and did not stay quiet for another moment!
"Mother!" implored Antonio, "do sit down!"
"Mother!" urged Gaspare, still wrathful, "go and look after her!"
"Oh, these servants!" said the mother-in-law, turning to Regina, "one shouldn't mention them, I know, but they're the ruin of families. I'll tell you afterwards——"
"It's one of the gravest of social problems," said Massimo, sarcastically, looking straight before him.
"But one can't live without servants," cried Gaspare.
"Yet the servants are the death of you?"
"Oh, I'll be the death of them if they don't do their business," said Gaspare, and they all laughed.
Notwithstanding the old lady's irruptions into the kitchen the courses were a long time coming. Talk grew animated. Massimo chattered with the cousin; Signora Anna expatiated to Signora Clara on the delinquencies of the maid.
"How are you getting on with your Gigione?" Antonio asked Gaspare; and his brother replied, abusing his chief as he had abused Marina.
"Did you get my last letter?" Arduina demanded of Regina, under cover of the general noise.
"Which?"
"The one in which I asked information about the state of private benevolence in Mantua."
"Oh, pray leave her in peace," interrupted Antonio testily.
Regina thought of her old home, of the beautiful picture seen through the window of the great dining-parlour, the woods, the silver river sparkling in the summer sunshine—all lost! The actual picture of the woods, and the painted picture above the chimneypiece, a river scene by Baratta, showing the green banks of the Parma, and white boats against a violet sky—all vanished—vanished for ever! Seated on this back-breaking chair, among all these people who chattered of vulgar things, dismay again invaded her soul, the dismay felt by the condemned at the thought of association with his fellow-prisoners. Antonio paid her little attention; he was sucked into the current of his brothers' talk and had become a stranger to her. Again he made some jest at Arduina's expense; the maid looked at the ladies and laughed. Indeed, they all laughed. Why did they laugh? Was happiness making Antonio cruel? His brother Mario—a man no longer young, who seldom spoke, but always reddened when he heard his thought expressed by somebody else—detested, as they all knew, his wife's scribbling mania. So Antonio persisted in questioning his sister-in-law about her newspaper, The Future of Woman.
"It has reached a circulation of three copies," said Massimo, "and it's clearly anxious to provoke quarrels, for it has printed a sonnet from a Calabrian paper without leave."
"My goodness! how witty you are!" cried Arduina, laughing, but her whole face expressed a vague terror.
Sor Mario, his eyes on his plate, grunted and munched like an angry bullock. There followed a perfect explosion of childish cruelty towards the poor creature, who, even to Regina, suggested a caricature.
"I've never succeeded in discovering the office of her paper," said Claretta; "one ought to be able to go there if only to find the editor."
"There are plenty of editors in the street," answered Arduina; "a girl like you could find one anywhere."
"I don't see the sense of that!" cried Gaspare.
"We never expect you to see the sense of anything."
"Come, show sense yourself!" interposed her husband, threatening her with his fork.
"Are you in the Woman Movement, Regina?" some one asked.
"I? No!" answered the bride, as if starting from a dream. Then, wishing to defend her sister-in-law, less out of pity for her than out of dislike to the brothers, she added, "Perhaps Arduina will convert me."
"Antonio! get out your stick!" cried Gaspare, and again they all laughed.
The topic changed. They discussed a certain Madame Makuline, a Russian princess long resident in Rome, to whom Antonio had been introduced by Arduina, and who occasionally employed him in the administration of her affairs.
"She should give a wedding present to Regina," said the authoress; "I expect her to dinner to-morrow; will you two come?"
This intelligence somewhat restored Arduina's prestige, and Regina breathed more freely. The conversation ran on countesses and duchesses; Claretta cried, turning to Massimo—
"Oh, now I remember! You were seen yesterday——"
"Wasn't I seen to-day?"
"——running after Donna Maria del Carro's carriage. It was raining, and you had no umbrella."
"That's why I ran," he said, flattered and pleased.
"No, my dear boy; you ran after the carriage."
"Why?" asked the innocent Regina.
"How sweet you are!" said the cousin. "He ran to be seen, of course! The Marchesa del Carro likes handsome young men, even when she doesn't know them."
"Thank you very much," said Massimo, making a bow.
Then they all got excited and talked of innumerable titled persons of their acquaintance, telling their "lives and miracles." Signora Clara, not to be left out, was insistent in describing the reception costume of a countess.
Regina listened. She did not confess it to herself, but she was certainly pleased that her new relations had friends among the aristocracy.
At last they arrived at the coffee, and Signora Anna turned to Regina intending to say something pleasant.
"I expect you miss your Mamma," she began; "you can't get accustomed to the idea of a second mother."
But she was interrupted by Gaspare, who came from a second inspection of the kitchen.
"My dear mother, just come and look. Come!" he insisted, flicking the corner of his napkin, "there's a flood in the kitchen. She has left the tap running."
The old lady had to get up; panting and puffing she followed her son to the kitchen. Presently Marina was heard sobbing.
"The man's unbearable!" said Arduina; "is that poor girl a slave? From the point of view of——"
"From the social point of view—" suggested Massimo.
"Pardon me," observed Aunt Clara, "she left the tap running."
"If ever I marry a man who meddles in the kitchen," said Claretta, tightening her sash at the looking-glass, "I'll give him—from the social point of view—such a hiding——"
"I too!" agreed the authoress.
Sor Mario, who was picking his teeth ferociously, uttered a grunt.
Signora Anna came back followed by Marina, her eyes red, her lips quivering.
"Pooh! don't cry!" said Massimo, "it makes a fright of you.