"Mochales was here last night," Lavinia finally remarked abruptly--
"that is he stood on the street and serenaded you."
Gheta put her cup down with a clatter.
"How charming!" she exclaimed. "And I missed it for an insufferable
affair. He stood under the window--"
"With a guitar," Lavinia proceeded evenly. "It was very beautiful."
"Heavens! Bembo's going to fetch him to the Guarinis' sale, and I
forgot and promised Anna Mantegazza to drive out to Arcetri! But Anna
won't miss this. It was really a very pretty compliment."
She spoke with a trivial satisfaction that jarred painfully on
Lavinia's memory of the past night. Gheta calmly accepted the serenade
as another tribute to her beauty; Lavinia could imagine what Anna
Mantegazza and her sister would say, and they both seemed commonplace--
even a little vulgar--to her acutely sensitive being. She suddenly lost
her desire to resemble Gheta; her sister diminished in her estimation.
The elder, Lavinia realized with an unsparing detachment, was enveloped
in a petty vanity acquired in an atmosphere of continuous flattery; it
had chilled her heart.
The Guarinis, who had been overtaken by misfortune, and whose household
goods were, being disposed of at public sale, occupied a large gloomy
floor on the Via Cavour. The rooms were crowded by their friends and
the merely curious; the carpets were protected by a temporary covering;
and all the furnishings, the chairs and piano, pictures, glass and
bijoux, bore gummed and numbered labels.
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