A House-Party Don Gesualdo and a Rainy June (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...in the house are still in their own rooms; it is solitary, sunny, still; a thrush is singing in a jessamine thicket, there is no other sound except that of a gardener's broom sweeping on the other side of the laurel hedge. The Babe feels that it is now or never for his coup de maitre. He plucks a rose, the best one he has, and offers it to Madame Sabaroff, who accepts it gratefully, though it is considerably earwig-eaten, and puts it in her corsage. The eyes of Brandolin follow it wistfully. The Babe glances at them alternately from under his hair, then his small features assume an expression of cherubic innocence and unconsciousness. The most ruse little rogue in the whole kingdom, he knows how to make himself look like a perfect reproduction of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Artlessness or Infancy. He gazes up in Xenia Sabaroff's face with angelic simplicity admirably assumed. "When you marry him," says the Babe, pointing to Brandolin, with admirably affected naivete, "you will let me hold up your train, won't you? I always hold up my friends' trains when they marry. I have a page's dress, Louis something or other, and a sword, and a velvet cap with a badge and a feather: I always look very well." "Oh, what an odious petit-maitre you will be when you are a man, my dear Babe " says Xenia Sabaroff. She does not take any notice of his opening words, but a flush of color comes over her face and passes as quickly as it came. "Petit-maitre,