The Harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. This

consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with

window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the

green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. Always

the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted

by the empress of Germany. Indeed, tourists were generally and

respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the

moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign

of the vanished august presence. But royalty in passing, as with the most

humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or

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otherwise.

It was raining, a fine, soft, blurring Alpine rain, and a blue-grey

monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the

keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky

began. It was a day for indoors, for dreams, good books, and good

fellows.

The old-fashioned photographer would have admired and striven to

perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. In the old days it was quite the

proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some

pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the

piano, or reading a volume of poems. No one ever seemed to bother about

the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera

lens. Here they all were. Mrs. Harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of

the Amelia Ars of Bologna, which, as the initiated know, is a wonderful

lace. By one of the windows sat Nora, winding interminable yards of

lace-hemming from off the willing if aching digits of the Barone, who was

speculating as to what his Neapolitan club friends would say could they

see, by some trick of crystal-gazing, his present occupation. Celeste was

at the piano, playing (pianissimo) snatches from the operas, while

Abbott looked on, his elbows propped upon his knees, his chin in his

palms, and a quality of ecstatic content in his eyes. He was in his

working clothes, picturesque if paint-daubed. The morning had been

pleasant enough, but just before luncheon the rain clouds had gathered and

settled down with that suddenness known only in high altitudes.

The ex-gladiator sat on one of those slender mockeries, composed of

gold-leaf and parabolic curves and faded brocade, such as one sees at the

Trianon or upon the stage or in the new home of a new millionaire, and

which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious Louis invented for the

discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. It creaked

whenever Harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and

no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the

baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only

to retrieve like the good dog that he was. To-day his shoes offered no

loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. His tie

harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was of grey tweed; in

fact, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, at least for the

present.




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