As to Peter--she called him her
Little Peter or, in his more expansive moments, Peter the Great. Soon
he was always coming to the villa at meal-times and staying for hours
afterwards, while they wrestled with the complexities of Russian
genders. He made no secret of the pleasure he derived from filling his
healthy young stomach at her expense; everything supplementary to that
prime condition he took as a gift from the gods. If he had not been so
simple-minded he could have wheedled any amount of money out of her.
The affair had now been going on for four month--quite a long while, as
such affairs went.
Not for the first time did Madame Steynlin experience the drawbacks of
her house, as regards natural situation. It was, as Don Francesco often
pointed out, "the most unstrategic villa on Nepenthe." Ah, that
peninsula, that isthmus, or whatever you called the thing--what on earth
had attracted her to the place? What demon had tempted her to buy it?
How she envied the other people--Keith, for example, who, if he had been
a man of that kind, could have allowed any visitor, in the broadest
daylight, to creep in or out of his mouldy old gateway in the wall
without a soul being any the wiser! High-priced horticultural experts
had been consulted as to the best means of thickening the vegetation
and screening the approaches to the house.
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