The Count smiled deprecatingly, and looked at me with a great deal of sentiment, twisting his moustache. Another pause ensued. It’s all very well to say I should have dismissed him long before this, but I should like to know on what grounds?
“I wish very much to write my mother that I have found the American lady for a new Countess Filgiatti,” he said at last with emotion.
“Well,” I said awkwardly, “I hope you will find her.”
“Ah, Mees Wick,” exclaimed the Count recklessly, “you are that American lady. When I saw you in the railway I said, ‘It is my vision!’ At once I desired to embrace the papa. And he was not cold with me—he told me of the soda. I had courage, I had hope. At first when I see you to-day I am a little derange. In the Italian way I speak first with the papa. Then came a little thought in my heart—no, it is propitious! In America the daughter maka always her own arrangimento. So I am spoken.”
At this I rose immediately. I would not have it on my conscience that I toyed with the matrimonial proposition of even an Italian Count.
“I think I understand you, Count Filgiatti,” I said—There is something about the most insignificant proposal that makes one blush in a perfectly absurd way. I have never been able to get over it—“and I fear I must bring this interview to a close. I——”
“Ah, it is too embarrassing for you! It is experience very new, very strange.”
“No,” I said, regaining my composure, “not at all. But the fact is, Count Filgiatti, the transaction you propose doesn’t appeal to me. It is too business-like to be sentimental, and too sentimental to be business-like. I’m sorry to seem disobliging, but I really couldn’t make up my mind to marry a gentleman for his ancestors who are dead, even if he was willing to marry me for my income which may disappear. Poppa is very speculative. But I know there’s a certain percentage of Americans who think a count with a family seat is about the only thing worth bringing away from Europe, now that we manufacture so much for ourselves, and if I meet any of them I’ll bear you in mind.”
“Upon my word!”
It was Mrs. Portheris, in the doorway behind us, just arrived from Siena.
* * * * *
I mentioned the matter to my parents, thinking it might amuse them, and it did. From a business point of view, however, poppa could not help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the Count. “I hope, daughter,” he said, “you didn’t give him the ha-ha to his face.”