The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎660r] (210/239)

NOSTALGIA.
179
“ My dear child, capital! ” cried Arduina in ecstasy. “ Yes! yes !
we’ll go together! ”
But Regina made a roguish gesture moving her hand like a fan
with her thumb on the point of her nose; and the other laughed,
more than ever sure her sister-in-law was half imbecile.
Next day they went together to the distinguished uncle, who
turned out only a second cousin of Arduina’s mother. The authoress
had dressed herself up. She wore a black silk dress much wrinkled
on the shoulders, a yellow straw hat trimmed with poppies; a feather
boa so thin and worn that people turned their heads to look at it.
Regina, also in black, with her inevitable lace scarf, seemed beside
her almost a beauty.
The Senator lived in Via Sistina on a fourth floor. That comforted
Regina greatly. If a senator could exist on a fourth floor she might
get accustomed to a fifth. Still more was she comforted when she
saw the Senator’s “ apartment.” It was very dark and furnished
with a meagreness nearer to discomfort than to simplicity. A few
aspidistras whose large leaves glistened feebly in the chiaroscuro,
adorned the ante-room and the two dreary reception rooms through
which the ladies were conducted by an elderly chambermaid. There
was a portrait in oils of an old man, lean and red, with protruding blue
eyes and beautiful white hair (suggestive, however, of a wig), who
smiled sarcastically out of his yellow background. The portrait was
reflected in a cracked mirror; and the vast, dreary, dark room seemed
animated by the two figures—immobile against the yellow back
ground of the picture and the mirror—looking at each other, smiling
sarcastically, sharing some half mocking, half melancholy thought.
Regina glanced at herself in the glass, and fancied that the two
figures, the one in front and the one behind, had fixed their mocking
eyes upon herself; then she turned suddenly, for she saw advancing
silently against the yellow background of the room a third figure
•exactly like the other two. It was the Senator.
“Oh, brava! ” he said briskly, turning to Arduina and looking at
Regina.
“Let me introduce my sister-in-law,” said Arduina; “she has
been married one month.”
“ How stupid she is! ” thought Regina, but had herself nothing to
say when the old man congratulated her on having been married a
month.
“Oh, brava! brava! ” he repeated; and Arduina quickly explained
the occasion of her visit.
The old Senator again said Brava! brava/ but Regina understood
perfectly that he was out of sympathy with the entire affair.
“ Oh, brava/ brava/ It's your Paper; to be sure; and devoted to
the woman question?”
“No, no! Still—yes—to women’s questions, properly under
stood.”
“ I see. Women’s questions properly understood. Well, teach