Even more pathetic was the woman, blazing in 20,000
diamond-power, haggard under her rouged smile, her large uncovered back
and breast heaving, her fat, ungloved hands mere bunches of fingers and
rings. The girl did not so much matter. She was young and handsome, her
moustache as yet but the shadow of a coming event; and the affair was
not so tragic to her since she had the attention of Rongier and plenty
of other men. But Vanno had seen such faces and figures as those of Sam
Holbein and his wife in dusky shops at Constantine. They had been
happier and more at home there.
Disgustedly he knew that it comforted the woman to be talking with
Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, yet he gave the comfort and spread it
thickly for her by showing deference, listening patiently to desperate
boastings of her splendid possessions: her house in Park Lane, the
castle "Sam" had bought in Fifeshire. "I am a county lady _there_, I can
tell you, Prince!" she said, with a giggle that just escaped being a
sob. "I hope you will come to my ball at Dornock Castle next August, in
the Games Week, your Highness; all the men in kilts and mostly with
titles; our own family pipers, never less than six, playing for the
reels. My daughter has taken lessons, and I tell you she can give points
to some of those Calvanistic cats with Macs to their names, and a lot of
rot about clans, who think just because they're Scotch they're
_everybody_. Why, some of the old nobility up there have got such poor,
degenerated taste in decoration, they have nasty plaid carpets and
curtains all over their houses.
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