“Are these delicious early peaches from Lama, Emilio?” asked Mario Colonna, to divert the conversation better, alluding to the great property of Casa Guasco near Terni.
“Yes,” replied his host immediately, glad to be able to open his mouth and speak of something else; “my gardens there work miracles, and also my gardeners. Every day new flowers and fruit arrive.”
“Oh, you must be very happy about it, Maria,” observed Flaminia, with a good-natured smile on her lips.
“You ought to love La Lama, Donna Maria,” remarked Francesco Serlupi, in an endeavour to mend matters; “it is some time since you were there?”
But the question was put in a low voice, besides, the dinner was finished, so his hostess rose suddenly without replying to this latest piece of stupidity, and leaning on the arm of Senator Fabio Guasco the other guests followed her, Flaminia Colonna on the arm of Emilio, Gianni Provana, Francesco Serlupi, and Mario Colonna in a group.
“However did it come into your head?” said Gianni Provana to Serlupi, keeping him back a little with Mario Colonna. “No one will ask you to dinner, my dear friend, if you start breaking the dishes in your host’s face at dessert.”
“You are right; I am a proper stupid,” Serlupi declared, as they crossed the two or three rooms before the drawing-room, “I shall go away at once; I can’t stop here.”
“Worse and worse,” observed Colonna; “stop a moment or two longer.”
“You are going away with Donna Flaminia, aren’t you?”
“Yes, we can’t possibly stay. We are going to Madame Takuhira’s last reception at the Japanese Legation.”
“Do me a charity and take me away with you,” begged Serlupi.
“Very well, very well,” said Colonna, laughing, “we will save you even to the last indiscretion.”
A circle was formed in the large drawing-room, all gathering in a corner of it where Maria had formed a little room from the larger with screens, large plants, and furniture, which cut off the space. However, the conversation proceeded languidly, the sort of coldness which had been there since the beginning of dinner had become accentuated after Francesco Serlupi’s escapade. It was the first dinner Emilio and Maria had given after her return home, thus resuming their old custom of giving, during the chief Roman season from December to the end of May, two dinners a week, one to intimates, another of ceremony, the traditional hospitality in Casa Guasco and high Roman society. It had been Flaminia Colonna who had urged her friend to resume the habits of life where they had been relaxed; it had been Flaminia, too, who had said affectionately to Emilio Guasco, with a sweet smile, “Give us a dinner like you used to.”