So sure, in fact, is the shopman of this that when, five minutes later, another and less constant customer sees, admires, and would purchase that frail fabric, he is not afraid positively to state that forty _metri_ of it are sold to the Contessa Capramonte; he is not ashamed either, when asked the price by this next customer, to give it only as two francs and fifty _centesimi_, but then this second lady is a foreigner, and will not bargain, and the Signor Giordano knows exactly how much to put on, because he knows how much a Genoese lady will have off before she buys. Is it waste of time? Not at all, the shopman will tell you—only part of the day’s work.
The _Contessa_ walks leisurely from Soziglia down the Via de’ Orefici, and goes into a jeweller’s shop in this jewellers’ street, where, over lumps of pale pink coral and finely-wrought trinkets of silver and gilt-silver filigree, she plays her play over again, to come out triumphant with a necklace, whose dainty lumps and loops and wires are cunningly fashioned into leaves and roses. The necklace is not for herself, for a Genoese lady despises the produce of that darkly, strangely winding street, where the booths stand out freely to view, and glitter with the light silver wares, or are rich with the red heavy coral; but bargaining comes to her as second nature, so she has fought none the less bravely over the trinket because the commission is for a foreign friend. Thoughts of that dress have not strayed from her mind all the same, and before the _Contessa_ drives out of Soziglia the citron gauze has been purchased for two francs and fifty _centesimi_ the _metro_, which was the exact sum on which Signor Giordano meant they should meet from the beginning; and silk to match, and flowers, and ribbons have been added to the bill, all for something more than the one, for something less than the other said at first. So _la Contessa_ goes home to her palace at Carignano, where banksia roses are blooming against the wall, and pink and white fruit-blossoms in the _villa_, while a purple Judas-tree is a-flower before the house. And the Signor Giordano goes home to the flat in Castelletto, where, though it is five storeys high, flowers still bloom upon the terrace and over the _pergola_, for winter is past, and we are in spring-time.