"I believe they will be here before sunset," Madame Canincio told Vera. "We are waiting for a telegram to order dinner. The _chef_ is in an agony of anxiety. First impressions go for so much, and no doubt Signor Provana is a _gourmet_." Vera heard no more that day, but the maid who brought the early breakfast told her that the great man and his daughter had arrived at five o'clock on the previous afternoon. Vera went to the flower market in a fever of expectation, bought her cheap supply of red and purple anemones, her poor little bunch of Parma violets and branches of mimosa, thinking of the luxury of tuberoses and camellias in the Provana _salon_, but she thought much more of the sick girl, and the father's love, exemplified in all that forethought and preparation. For youth in vigorous health there is always a melancholy interest in youth that is doomed to die, and Vera's heart ached with sympathy for the consumptive girl, for whom a father's wealth might do everything except spin out the weak thread of life. She heard voices in the hotel garden, as she went up the sloping carriage drive, with her flower basket on her arm; and at a bend in the avenue of pepper trees and palms she stopped with a start, surprised at the gaiety of the scene, which made the shabby hotel garden seem a new place. The dusty expanse of scanty grass which passed for a lawn, where nothing gayer than aloes and orange trees had flourished, was now alive with colour. A girl in a smart white cloth frock and a large white hat was sitting in a blue and gold wicker chair, a girl all brightness and vitality, as it seemed to Vera; where she had expected to see a languid invalid reclining among a heap of pillows, a wasted hand drooping inertly, too feeble to hold a book. This girl's aspect was of life, not of sickness and coming death. Her eyes were darkest brown, large and brilliant, with long black lashes that intensified their darkness, intensified also by the marked contrast of hair that was almost flaxen, parted on her forehead, and hanging in a single thick plait that fell below her waist, and was tied with a blue ribbon. Three spaniels, one King Charles, and two Blenheims, jumped and barked about her chair, and increased the colour and gaiety of her surroundings by their frivolous decorations of silver bells and blue ribbons; and, as if this were not enough of colour, gaudy draperies of Italian printed cotton were flung upon the unoccupied chairs, and covered a wicker table, while, as the highest note in this scale of colour, a superb crimson and green cockatoo, with a tail of majestic length, screamed and fluttered on his perch, and responded not too amiably to the attentions of Dr. Wilmot, who was trying to scratch himself into the bird's favour. The doctor desisted from his "Pretty Pollyings" on perceiving Vera. "Ah, Miss Davis, that's lucky. Do stop a minute with Grannie's flowers. I want to introduce you to Mademoiselle di Provana."