“Our wetting will have done us good—­it will make us grow.  You and I will never regret that, will we, Emilietta?” said the priest.

A lively colour had come into the Duchessa’s cheeks; her eyes seemed unusually bright.  Her hair was in some disorder, drooping at the sides, and blown over her brow in fine free wavelets.  It was dark in the kitchen, save for the firelight, which danced fantastically on the walls and ceiling, and struck a ruddy glow from Marietta’s copper pots and pans.  The rain pattered lustily without; the wind wailed in the chimney; the lightning flashed, the thunder volleyed.  And Peter looked at the Duchessa—­and blessed the elements.  To see her seated there, in her wet gown, seated familiarly, at her ease, before his fire, in his kitchen, with that colour in her cheeks, that brightness in her eyes, and her hair in that disarray—­it was unspeakable; his heart closed in a kind of delicious spasm.  And the fragrance, subtle, secret, evasive, that hovered in the air near her, did not diminish his emotion.

“I wonder,” she asked, with a comical little glance upwards at him, “whether you would resent it very much if I should take off my hat—­because it’s a perfect reservoir, and the water will keep trickling down my neck.”

His joy needed but this culmination that she should take off her hat!

“Oh, I beg of you—­” he returned fervently.

“You had better take yours off too, Emilia,” said the Duchessa.

“Admire masculine foresight,” said the priest.  “I took mine off when I came in.”

“Let me hang them up,” said Peter.

It was wonderful to hold her hat in his hand—­it was like holding a part of herself.  He brushed it surreptitiously against his face, as he hung it up.  Its fragrance—­which met him like an answering caress, almost—­did not lessen his emotion.

Then Marietta brought the tea, with bread-and-butter, and toast, and cakes, and pretty blue china cups and saucers, and silver that glittered in the firelight.

“Will you do me the honour of pouring the tea?” Peter asked the Duchessa.

So she poured the tea, and Peter passed it.  As he stood close to her, to take it—­oh, but his heart beat, believe me!  And once, when she was giving him a cup, the warm tips of her fingers lightly touched his hand.  Believe me, the touch had its effect.  And always there was that heady fragrance in the air, like a mysterious little voice, singing secrets.

“I wonder,” the old priest said, “why tea is not more generally drunk by us Italians.  I never taste it without resolving to acquire the habit.  I remember, when I was a child, our mothers used to keep it as a medicine; and you could only buy it at the chemists’ shops.”

“It’s coming in, you know, at Rome—­among the Whites,” said the Duchessa.

“Among the Whites!” cried he, with a jocular simulation of disquiet.  “You should not have told me that, till I had finished my cup.  Now I shall feel that I am sharing a dissipation with our spoliators.”