That evening, among the letters Peter received from England,
there was one from his friend Mrs. Winchfield, which contained
certain statistics.
"Your Duchessa di Santangiolo 'was' indeed, as your funny old
servant told you, English: the only child and heiress of the
last Lord Belfont. The Belfonts of Lancashire (now, save for
your Duchessa, extinct) were the most bigoted sort of Roman
Catholics, and always educated their daughters in foreign
convents, and as often as not married them to foreigners. The
Belfont men, besides, were ever and anon marrying foreign
wives; so there will be a goodish deal of un-English blood in
your Duchessa's own ci-devant English veins.
"She was born, as I learn from an indiscretion of my Peerage,
in 1870, and is, therefore, as near to thirty (the dangerous
age!) as to the six-and-twenty your droll old Marietta gives
her. Her Christian names are Beatrice Antonia Teresa Mary
--faites en votre choix. She was married at nineteen to
Baldassarre Agosto, Principe Udeschini, Duca di Santangiolo,
Marchese di Castellofranco, Count of the Holy Roman Empire,
Knight of the Holy Ghost and of St. Gregory, (does it take your
breath away?), who, according to Frontin, died in '93; and as
there were no children, his brother Felipe Lorenzo succeeded to
the titles. A younger brother still is Bishop of Sardagna.
Cardinal Udeschini is the uncle.
"That, dear child, empties my sack of information. But perhaps
I have a bigger sack, full of good advice, which I have not yet
opened. And perhaps, on the whole, I will not open it at all.
Only, remember that in yonder sentimental Italian lake country,
in this summer weather, a solitary young man's fancy might be
much inclined to turn to thoughts of--folly; and keep an eye on
my friend Peter Marchdale."
Our solitary young man brooded over Mrs. Winchfield's letter
for a long while.
"The daughter of a lord, and the widow of a duke, and the
niece-in-law of a cardinal," he said. "And, as if that were
not enough, a bigoted Roman Catholic into the bargain . . . .
And yet--and yet," he went on, taking heart a little, "as for
her bigotry, to judge by her assiduity in attending the village
church, that factor, at least, thank goodness, would appear to
be static, rather than dynamic."
After another longish interval of brooding, he sauntered down
to the riverside, through his fragrant garden, fragrant and
fresh with the cool odours of the night, and peered into the
darkness, towards Castel Ventirose. Here and there he could
discern a gleam of yellow, where some lighted window was not
entirely hidden by the trees. Thousands and thousands of
insects were threading the silence with their shrill insistent
voices. The repeated wail, harsh, prolonged, eerie, of some
strange wild creature, bird or beast, came down from the forest
of the Gnisi. At his feet, on the troubled surface of the Aco,
the stars, reflected and distorted, shone like broken
spearheads.