IX. NEW ACQUAINTANCES
“I PROTESTANTI DELLA SIMPATÍA”
It began again to rain disastrously; the days were made up of downpours and squalls, to the great despair of the foreigners.
At night the Piazza Esedra was a fine sight from the hotel balcony. The arc lights reflected their glow in the lakes of rain beneath them, and the great jet of the fountain in the centre took on tones of blue and mother-of-pearl, where the rays of the electric light pierced through it.
In the hotel parlour one dance followed another. Everybody complained gaily of the bad weather.
Shortly before the middle of Lent there arrived a Parisian family at the hotel, composed of a mother with two daughters and a companion.
This family might be considered a representation of the entente cordiale. The mother was French, the widow first of a Spaniard, Señor Sandoval, by whom she had had one daughter, and then of an Englishman, Mr. Dawson, by whom she had had another.
Mme. Dawson was a fat, imposing lady, with tremendous brilliants in her ears and somewhat theatrical clothes; Mile. Sandoval, the elder daughter, was of Arab type, with black eyes, an aquiline nose, pale rose-coloured lips, and a malicious smile, full of mystery, as if it revealed restless and diabolical intentions.
Her half-sister, Mile. Dawson, was a contrast, being the perfect type of a grotesque Englishwoman, with a skin like a beet, and freckles.
The governess, Mile. Cadet, was not at all pretty, but she was gay and sprightly. These four women seated in the middle of the dining-room, a little stiff, a little out of temper, seemed, particularly the first few days, to defy anybody that might have wished to approach them. They replied coolly to the formal bows of the other guests, and none of them cared to take part in the dances.