Lady Caroline asked her crossly what she wanted, and Costanza’s head went on one side with delight at the sheer music of her voice.  She said, after waiting a moment in case the music was going to continue, for she didn’t wish to miss any of it, that she wanted orders; she had been to the Signorina’s mother, but in vain.

“She is not my mother,” repudiated Lady Caroline angrily; and her anger sounded like the regretful wail of a melodious orphan.

Costanza poured forth pity.  She too, she explained, had no mother—­

Lady Caroline interrupted with the curt information that her mother was alive and in London.

Costanza praised God and the saints that the young lady did not yet know what it was like to be without a mother.  Quickly enough did misfortunes overtake one; no doubt the young lady already had a husband.

“No,” said Lady Caroline icily.  Worse than jokes in the morning did she hate the idea of husbands.  And everybody was always trying to press them on her—­all her relations, all her friends, all the evening papers.  After all, she could only marry one, anyhow; but you would think from the way everybody talked, and especially those persons who wanted to be husbands, that she could marry at least a dozen.

Her soft, pathetic “No” made Costanza, who was standing close to her, well with sympathy.

“Poor little one,” said Costanza, moved actually to pat her encouragingly on the shoulder, “take hope.  There is still time.”

“For lunch,” said Lady Caroline freezingly, marveling as she spoke that she should be patted, she who had taken so much trouble to come to a place, remote and hidden, where she could be sure that among other things of a like oppressive nature pattings also were not, “we will have—­”

Costanza became business-like.  She interrupted with suggestions, and her suggestions were all admirable and all expensive.

Lady Caroline did not know they were expensive, and fell in with them at once.  They sounded very nice.  Every sort of young vegetables and fruits came into them, and much butter and a great deal of cream and incredible numbers of eggs.  Costanza said enthusiastically at the end, as a tribute to this acquiescence, that of the many ladies and gentlemen she had worked for on temporary jobs such as this she preferred the English ladies and gentlemen.  She more than preferred them—­they roused devotion in her.  For they knew what to order; they did not skimp; they refrained from grinding down the faces of the poor.

From this Lady Caroline concluded that she had been extravagant, and promptly countermanded the cream.

Costanza’s face fell, for she had a cousin who had a cow, and the cream was to have come from them both.

“And perhaps we had better not have chickens,” said Lady Caroline.

Costanza’s face fell more, for her brother at the restaurant kept chickens in his back-yard, and many of them were ready for killing.