She is a very dear friend of mine--we knew each
other as children, and were three years together at the Convent of the
Annunciation in Florence. She is younger than I am.'
'Is she an American?'
'No, an Italian. She is from Sienna. She comes of the Bandinelli family,
and was baptized with water from the "Fonte Gaja." For all that, she is
rather melancholy by nature, but very sweet. The story of her marriage
is not a very cheerful one. Ferres is a most unsympathetic person.
However, they have a little girl--a perfect darling--you will see; a
little white face with enormous eyes and masses of dark hair. She is
very like her mother--Look, Andrea, is not that rose just like velvet?
And this--I could eat it--look--it is like glorified cream. How
delicious!'
She went on picking out the different roses and chatting pleasantly. A
wave of perfume, intoxicating as century-old wine, streamed from the
massed flowers; some of the petals dropped and hung in the folds of
Francesca's gown; beneath the window the dark shaft of a cypress pierced
the golden sunshine, and through Andrea's memory ran persistently, like
a phrase of music, a line from Petrarch:--
_'Cosi partia le rose e le parole._'
Two days afterwards he repaid his cousin by presenting her with a sonnet
curiously fashioned on an antique model and inscribed on vellum with
illuminated ornaments in the style of those that enliven the missals of
Attavante and of Liberale of Verona.
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