She smiled at everything in life,
especially the things she did n't like and which kept her talent for
mendacity in healthy exercise. A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient
to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful she-wolf. This
inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her dealings with
her melancholy mistress, to whom she had been bequeathed by the late
occupant of the apartment, and who, to Rowland's satisfaction,
promised to be diverted from her maternal sorrows by the still
deeper perplexities of Maddalena's theory of roasting, sweeping, and
bed-making.
Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence, whence in
the summer mornings he had five minutes' walk in the sharp, black,
shadow-strip projected by winding, flower-topped walls, to join his
friends. The life at the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined
itself, was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from
exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm. If a sensible shadow rested
upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice; it was feigning a
repose which it very scantily felt.
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