XIV
Life was not running on oiled wheels at the Villa Bella Vista.
A spirit of discontent, a feeling that they had been lured to the house
under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was
expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind
the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment
began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed
snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever it passed.
In the first place the villa, which had been described glowingly by Lady
Dauntrey to the Collises and Dodo Wardropp, was not what she had painted
it. Indeed, as Dodo remarked to Miss Collis, it was not what any one had
painted it, at least within the memory of man. Once it had been a rich
gold colour, but many seasons of neglect had tarnished the gold to a
freckled brown, which even the flowering creepers that should have
cloaked it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their
leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria
in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled
dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a
blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the
air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The
ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in
which they had been wrapped through the summer heat. The imitation lace
drapery underneath them had been torn and not mended.
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