So would Signor Cortese come down that very day?
She ran upstairs with the news to her husband.
"My dear, 'Lucretia' is finished," she said, "and that angel
practically offers it me. Now what are we to do about dinner tonight?
Jacob and Jane are coming, and neither you nor they, I suppose, speak
one word of Italian, and you know what mine is, firm and intelligible
and operatic but not conversational. What are we to do? He hates
talking English.... Oh, I know, if I can only get Mrs Lucas. They
always talk Italian, I believe, at home. I wonder if she can come.
She's musical, too, and I shall ask her husband, I think: that'll be a
man over, but it will be another Italiano----"
Olga wrote at once to Lucia, mentioning that Cortese was staying with
them, but, quite naturally, saying nothing about the usefulness of
Peppino and her being able to engage the musician in his own tongue,
for that she took for granted. An eager affirmative (such a great
pleasure) came back to her, and for the rest of the day, Lucia and
Peppino made up neat little sentences to let off to the dazzled
Cortese, at the moment when they said "good-night," to shew that they
could have talked Italian all the time, had there been any occasion for
doing so.
Mrs Weston and Colonel Boucher had already arrived when Lucia and her
husband entered, and Lucia had quite a shock to see on what intimate
terms they were with their hostess.
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