CHAPTER 12, part 6
Lucia had to say something. A further exposure was at hand, quite inevitably. It was no use for her and Peppino to recollect a previous engagement.
"Oh, my Italian is terribly rusty," she said, knowing that Mrs Weston's eye was on her.... Why had she not sent Mrs Weston a handsome wedding-present that morning? "Rusty? We will ask Cortese about that when you've had a good talk to him. Ah, here he is!" Cortese came into the room, florid and loquacious, pouring out a stream of apology for his lateness to Olga, none of which was the least intelligible to Lucia. She guessed what he was saying, and next moment Olga, who apparently understood him perfectly, and told him with an enviable fluency that he was not late at all, was introducing him to her, and explaining that "la Signora" (Lucia understood this) and her husband talked Italian. She did not need to reply to some torrent of amiable words from him, addressed to her, for he was taken on and introduced to Mrs Weston, and the Colonel. But he instantly whirled round to her again, and asked her something. Not knowing the least what he meant, she replied: "Si: tante grazie." He looked puzzled for a moment and then repeated his question in English.
"In what deestrict of Italy 'ave you voyaged most?" Lucia understood that: so did Mrs Weston, and Lucia pulled herself together.
"In Rome," she said. "_Che bella citta! Adoro Roma, e il mio marito. Non e vere, Peppino?_" Peppino cordially assented: the familiar ring of this fine intelligible Italian restored his confidence, and he asked Cortese whether he was not very fond of music.... Dinner seemed interminable to Lucia. She kept a watchful eye on Cortese, and if she saw he was about to speak to her, she turned hastily to Colonel Boucher, who sat on her other side, and asked him something about his _cari cani_, which she translated to him. While he answered she made up another sentence in Italian about the blue sky or Venice, or very meanly said her husband had been there, hoping to direct the torrent of Italian eloquence to him. But she knew that, as an Italian conversationalist, neither she nor Peppino had a rag of reputation left them, and she dismally regretted that they had not chosen French, of which they both knew about as much, instead of Italian, for the vehicle of their linguistic distinction.
