In the midst of these beautiful
seventeenth-century grotesques, a brisk fire of wit and sarcasm soon
began to flash and scintillate. The three ladies were in high spirits
and prompt at repartee. Barbare la Viti laughed her sonorous masculine
laugh, throwing back her handsome boyish head and making free play with
her sparkling black eyes. Elena was in a more than usually brilliant
vein, and impressed Andrea as being so far removed from him, so
unfamiliar, so unconcerned, that he almost doubted whether yesterday's
scene had not been all a dream. Ludovico Barbarisi and the Prince of
Ferentino aided and abetted the ladies; Lord Heathfield entertained his
'young friend' by boring him to extinction with questions as to the
coming sales and giving him minute details of a very rare edition of the
_Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius--Roma, 1469--in folio, which he had acquired
a day or two ago for fifteen hundred and twenty lire. He broke off every
now and then to watch Barbarella, and then that gleam of dementia would
flash into his eyes, and his repulsive hands trembled strangely.
Andrea's irritation, disgust, and boredom at last reached such a pitch
that he was unable to conceal his feelings.
'You seem out of spirits, Ugenta,' said the princess.
'Well, a little, perhaps--Miching Mallecho is ill.'
Barbarisi at once overwhelmed him with importunate questions about the
horse's ailments; and then Lord Heathfield recommenced the story of the
_Metamorphoses_ from the beginning.
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