Americans -- Italy -- Fiction; New England -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Maddalena seemed to know that Mrs. Lander was speaking of the flowers.
She got them and gave them to Clementina, who found they were from some
of the men she had danced with. Mr. Hinkle had sent a vast bunch of
violets, which presently began to give out their sweetness in the warmth
of the room, and the odor brought him before her with his yellow hair,
scrupulously parted at the side, and smoothly brushed, showing his
forehead very high up. Most of the gentlemen wore their hair parted in
the middle, or falling in a fringe over their brows; the Russian's was
too curly to part, and Lord Lioncourt had none except at the sides.
She laughed, and Mrs. Lander said, "Tell about it, Clementina," and she
began with Mr. Hinkle, and kept coming back to him from the others. Mrs.
Lander wished most to know how that lord had got down to Florence; and
Clementina said he was coming to see her.
"Well, I hope to goodness he won't come to-day, I a'n't fit to see
anybody."
"Oh, I guess he won't come till to-morrow," said Clementina; she repeated
some of the compliments she had got, and she told of all Miss Milray's
kindness to her, but Mrs. Lander said, "Well, the next time, I'll thank
her not to keep you so late." She was astonished to hear that Mr. Ewins
was there, and "Any of the nasty things out of the hotel the'e?" she
asked.
"Yes," Clementina said, "the'e we'e, and some of them we'e very nice.
They wanted to know if I wouldn't join them, and have an aftanoon of our
own here in the hotel, so that people could come to us all at once."
She went back to the party, and described the rest of it. When she came
to the part about the Russian, she told what he had said of American
girls being fond of money, and wanting to marry foreign noblemen.
Mrs. Lander said, "Well, I hope you a'n't a going to get married in a
hurry, anyway, and when you do I hope you'll pick out a nice American."
"Oh, yes," said Clementina.
Mrs. Lander had their dinner brought to their apartment. She cheered up,
and she was in some danger of eating too much, but with Clementina's help
she denied herself. Their short evening was one of the gayest; Clementina
declared she was not the least sleepy, but she went to bed at nine, and
slept till nine the next day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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