The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lady Paramount, by Henry Harland

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Title: The Lady Paramount

Author: Henry Harland

Release Date: November 18, 2006 [EBook #19861]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LADY PARAMOUNT ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE LADY PARAMOUNT

By HENRY HARLAND

_Author of_

"THE CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX"

JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD

LONDON & NEW YORK -- MCMII

Copyright, 1902

BY JOHN LANE

All rights reserved

To

EDMUND GOSSE

The Lady Paramount

I

On the twenty-second anniversary of Susanna's birth, old Commendatore
Fregi, her guardian, whose charge, by the provisions of her father's
will, on that day terminated, gave a festa in her honour at his villa
in Vallanza. Cannon had been fired in the morning: two-and-twenty
salvoes, if you please, though Susanna had protested that this was
false heraldry, and that it advertised her, into the bargain, for an
old maid. In the afternoon there had been a regatta. Seven tiny
sailing-boats, monotypes,--the entire fleet, indeed, of the Reale Yacht
Club d'Ilaria--had described a triangle in the bay, with Vallanza,
Presa, and Veno as its points; and I need n't tell anyone who knows the
island of Sampaolo that the Marchese Baldo del Ponte's _Mermaid_,
English name and all, had come home easily the first. Then, in the
evening, there was a dinner, followed by a ball, and fire-works in the
garden.

Susanna was already staying at the summer palace on Isola Nobile, for
already--though her birthday falls on the seventeenth of April--the
warm weather had set in; and when the last guests had gone their way,
the Commendatore escorted her and her duenna, the Baroness Casaterrena,
down through the purple Italian night, musical with the rivalries of a
hundred nightingales, to the sea-wall, where, at his private
landing-stage, in the bat-haunted glare of two tall electric lamps, her
launch was waiting. But as he offered Susanna his hand, to help her
aboard, she stepped quickly to one side, and said, with a charming
indicative inclination of the head, "The Baronessa."

The prec