“Why couldn’t you? Mother’d love to have you, and the girls are longing to know what you look like. I’d love to capture you and carry you into our old hills. Perhaps by Easter you could go. Would the Contessa let you, do you think?” Carlota laughed merrily, and laid her arm around Jean’s shoulder. “I think she would let me do anything you wished. Let us go now and ask her.” The Contessa had not joined them at breakfast. She preferred her tray in Continental fashion, brought up by Minory, and they found her lying in the flood of sunshine from the south window, on the big comfy chintz covered couch drawn up before the open fireplace. Over a faded old rose silk dressing gown she wore a little filmy lace shawl the tint of old ivory that matched her skin exactly. Jean never saw her then or in after years without marvelling at the perpetual youth of her eyes and smile. She held out both hands to her with an exclamation of pleasure, and kissed her on her cheeks. “Ah, Giovanna mia,” she cried. “Good morning. Carlota has already visited me, and see, the flowers, so beautiful and dear, which your cousin sent up—roses and roses. They are my favorites. Other flowers we hold sentiment for, not for their own sakes, but because there are associations or memories connected with them, but roses bring forth homage. At my little villa in Tuscany which you must see some time, it is very old, very poor in many ways, but we have roses everywhere. Now, tell me, what is it you two have thought up. I see it in your eyes.” “Could I take Carlota home with me for a little visit when I go?” asked Jean. “It isn’t so very far from here, just over in the corner of Connecticut where Rhode Island and Massachusetts meet, and by Easter it will be beautiful in the hills. And it’s perfectly safe for her up there. Nothing ever happens.” The Contessa laughed at her earnestness. “We must consult with your cousin first,” she said. “If we can have you with us in Italy then we must let Carlota go with you surely. We sail in June. I have word from my sister. Would you like to go, child?” Jean sat down on the chair by the bedside and clasped her hands. “Oh, it just couldn’t happen,” she said in almost a hushed tone. “I’m sure it couldn’t, Contessa. Perhaps in another year, Cousin Beth said she might be going over, and then I could be with her. But not yet.” The Contessa lifted her eyebrows and smiled whimsically. “But what if there is a conspiracy of happiness afoot? Then you have nothing to say, and I have talked with your cousin, and she has written to another cousin, Roxy, I think she calls her. Ah, you have such wonderful women cousins, Giovanna, they are all fairy godmothers I think.”