This was certainly coarse, though probably Italian. Miss Mapp’s opinion of the Contessa fluctuated violently like a barometer before a storm and indicated “Changeable.”
“Dear Susan is such an intimate friend,” she said.
The Contessa looked at her very fixedly for a moment, and then appeared to dismiss the matter.
“My crab, my steak,” she said. “And where does your nice Captain, no, Major Flint live? I have a note to leave on him, for he has asked me to tea all alone, to see his tiger skins. He is going to be my flirt while I am in Tilling, and when I go he will break his heart, but I will have told him who can mend it again.”
“Dear Major Benjy!” said Miss Mapp, at her wits’ end to know how to deal with so feather-tongued a lady. “What a treat it will be to him to have you to tea. To-day, is it?”
The Contessa quite distinctly winked behind her eyeglass, which she had put up to look at Diva, who whirled by on the other side of the street.
“And if I said ‘To-day,’” she remarked, “you would—what is it that that one says”—and she indicated Diva—“yes, you would pop in, and the good Major would pay no attention to me. So if I tell you I shall go to-day, you will know that is a lie, you clever Miss Mapp, and so you will go to tea with him to-morrow and find me there. Bene! Now where is his house?”
This was a sort of scheming that had never entered into Miss Mapp’s life, and she saw with pain how shallow she had been all these years. Often and often she had, when inquisitive questions were put her, answered them without any strict subservience to truth, but never had she thought of confusing the issues like this. If she told Diva a lie,
