She gave a sudden cry of shame.  “This time—­the same place—­the same thing”—­and she began to beat down her happiness, knowing it to be sinful.  She was here to fight against this place, to rescue a little soul—­who was innocent as yet.  She was here to champion morality and purity, and the holy life of an English home.  In the spring she had sinned through ignorance; she was not ignorant now.  “Help me!” she cried, and shut the window as if there was magic in the encircling air.  But the tunes would not go out of her head, and all night long she was troubled by torrents of music, and by applause and laughter, and angry young men who shouted the distich out of Baedeker:—­

  Poggibonizzi fatti in la,
  Che Monteriano si fa citta!

Poggibonsi was revealed to her as they sang—­a joyless, straggling place, full of people who pretended.  When she woke up she knew that it had been Sawston.

Chapter 7

At about nine o’clock next morning Perfetta went out on to the loggia, not to look at the view, but to throw some dirty water at it.  “Scusi tanto!” she wailed, for the water spattered a tall young lady who had for some time been tapping at the lower door.

“Is Signor Carella in?” the young lady asked.  It was no business of Perfetta’s to be shocked, and the style of the visitor seemed to demand the reception-room.  Accordingly she opened its shutters, dusted a round patch on one of the horsehair chairs, and bade the lady do herself the inconvenience of sitting down.  Then she ran into Monteriano and shouted up and down its streets until such time as her young master should hear her.

The reception-room was sacred to the dead wife.  Her shiny portrait hung upon the wall—­similar, doubtless, in all respects to the one which would be pasted on her tombstone.  A little piece of black drapery had been tacked above the frame to lend a dignity to woe.  But two of the tacks had fallen out, and the effect was now rakish, as of a drunkard’s bonnet.  A coon song lay open on the piano, and of the two tables one supported Baedeker’s “Central Italy,” the other Harriet’s inlaid box.  And over everything there lay a deposit of heavy white dust, which was only blown off one moment to thicken on another.  It is well to be remembered with love.  It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely.  But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.

Miss Abbott did not sit down, partly because the antimacassars might harbour fleas, partly because she had suddenly felt faint, and was glad to cling on to the funnel of the stove.  She struggled with herself, for she had need to be very calm; only if she was very calm might her behaviour be justified.  She had broken faith with Philip and Harriet:  she was going to try for the baby before they did.  If she failed she could scarcely look them in the face again.