A Lady of Good Family by Jeanne Mackin

halfway between the wrought-iron-balconied front of the hotel, with the beautiful mountains behind it, and the lake itself, so that when I stood in the garden I was tempted to keep swiveling my head about to take in the scenery. I knew better, though. My grandparents blew on their soup and ate peas off their knives, but I had been instructed by a careful governess and kept my head and eyes looking straight ahead. Most uncomfortable.
    Thankfully, I had already taken in the scenery for two nights before Mr. Winters appeared in the garden, so the temptation to swivel my head and gawk had been thoroughly tamped down.
    I saw him sitting on the bench in the twilight, my little brother plaguing him with demands for candy, and I thought, I must rescue that gentleman from Raymond.
    He stood, of course, as soon as I approached. Our eyes met. Music floated down to us from the hotel, a waltz, and for a dizzy moment I thought he intended to ask me to dance with him. I would have, despite how slippery some of the stones were. Instead, he gave me a polite little bow and looked immediately away. Undoubtedly, his tutors had studied the same etiquettebook as my governess. I looked away as well, not to be outdone in this business of proper manners.
    We stood, both pretending to be completely absorbed by the scenery. There was I, seventeen, fresh from Schenectady; there was he, handsome and seemingly indifferent, though I was wearing a particularly pretty dress that evening, with enough bows on it, as Raymond had commented, to make a pink streamer to the moon and back.
    I didn’t know yet that Gilbert was in Vevey for two purposes: to visit an aunt, upon whom he was somewhat financially dependent, and to begin the process of recovering from an affair, for his mistress, an older widow, had sent him packing the week before. A young girl was not told of such matters; I had to discover them later, in Rome, through careful eavesdropping at several salon doors.
    Gilbert would never explain to me what had gone wrong between them, but wrong it had gone, which pleased me greatly. By the end of that evening in the garden in Vevey, I had already decided I would marry him.
    His aunt refused to allow me to be presented to her, of course. She hadn’t heard of my family—very few had—and she decided instantly I was common because I had allowed a strange man to talk with me in the hotel garden. Her disapproval helped my cause, I believe. Every man, even one raised by aunts in Switzerland, has a bit of the rebel in him.
    “Did you just sigh, Mrs. Winter?” Mr. Hardy asked, concern planting a furrow between his brows.
    “I was just remembering something,” I said. Another flash of lightning split the sky, and a gust of hot air blew on our faces. Mr. Hardy wore a white linen suit and he had opened the collar and loosened his tie, as my grandfather used to do after Sunday dinners in the hot summer. When I looked at him, my inner eye saw a yellow barn against a blue sky, a row of red hollyhocks.
    “A happy memory, I hope,” he said.
    “Very.”
    •   •   •   •
    “W hat disturbed you this morning, in the catacomb?”
    Minnie and Beatrix were in their Roman hotel suite again, reading the morning’s mail and drying their shoes before the small coal brazier that the concierge had brought up to drive the chill damp out of their rooms.
    “I didn’t like the atmosphere,” Beatrix said. “The air was heavy with mold and rot. It felt like being buried alive.”
    “Like a vestal virgin. That’s how they were punished if they broke their vow of chastity.”
    “You do acquire the strangest facts, Mother.”
    “That’s from Murray.” Minnie waved a guidebook at her. “He seemed quite pleased at the idea. When women have outlasted their appointed function, what more can be expected from them except to die?”
    From the acrimony in her voice, Beatrix could tell that Minnie was thinking of her husband. Or perhaps her husband’s mistress,