Only to-day was everything
finished to his satisfaction.
The villa, whose exterior copied the Petit Trianon, had a large entrance
hall of marble which opened to the roof, and was surrounded by a
gallery. This hall was coldly beautiful, with its few bronzes and gilded
seventeenth-century chairs, its tall vases of orange blossoms and tea
roses, its faded Persian rugs and mosaic tables. But it made an
extraordinarily impressive background or frame for a lovely woman, and
Marie Della Robbia was a lovely woman. Vanno had seen her many times now
in many different dresses since New Year's eve, when he had met her with
Angelo, at the Mentone railway station; but she had never struck him as
being a beauty, until to-day. As she came forward to greet her two
visitors, he said to himself for the first time that she was beautiful.
She and Angelo had evidently just entered from the garden. Her right
hand was full of roses, which she hastily changed into her left, and she
wore a softly folding white dress, with a great cart-wheel of a Leghorn
hat, drooping in all the right places, and wreathed with pink roses. She
was a tall woman with a long neck, therefore could well wear such a
hat; and it framed her head like an immense halo of dull gold. Her hair
was brown with red lights in it, and her eyes were of exactly the same
shade, the colour of ripe chestnuts. She had a beautiful short, rather
square face, of a creamy paleness; a square, low forehead, straight dark
brows, drawn very low over the long eyes; a short, straight nose, and a
short, curved upper lip, fitting so charmingly into the full squareness
of the under lip that her mouth looked like two pieces of pink coral
cleverly carved one upon another.
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