enjoy the rose for the rest of his life.

When Ortensia was seventeen and a half her uncle announced his
matrimonial intentions to her, fastened a fine string of pearls round
her throat, kissed her on the forehead, and left her alone to meditate
on her good fortune.

Her reflections were of a mixed character, however, and not all
pleasant. The idea that she could disobey or resist did not occur to
her, of course, for the Senator had always appeared to her as the
absolute lord of his household, against whose will it was useless to
make any opposition, and she knew what an important person he was
considered to be amongst his equals.

But in her inmost heart she knew that he was not really what he made
people think he was. She had a ready sense of humour, and she felt that
under his ponderous disguise of importance he was quite a ridiculous
person. He was miserly to meanness; he was as vain as an ape; he was a
man who had flattered himself, and had been flattered by others, into a
sort of artificially inflated doll that imposed on many people and
deceived almost all. And yet Ortensia was aware of something in him that
frightened her a little, though she could not quite tell what it was.
Possibly, like many externally artificial people, there was a cruel side
to his character. There are men who become ridiculous as soon as they
cease to be dangerous, and who are most dangerous when they fear that
they are just going to become a laughing-stock.

Ortensia reflected on these things after her uncle had given her the
pearls and had kissed her on the forehead. The pearls were very
beautiful, but the kiss had been distinctly disagreeable. The Senator
waxed his moustaches to make them stay up, as many men did then, and
she thought that if a cold hard-boiled egg, surrounded with bristles
like a hair-brush, had touched her forehead, the sensation would have
been very much the same, and she shook her delicate shoulders in disgust
at the thought, and slowly rubbed the offended spot with two fingers,
while her other hand played with the string of pearls in her lap.

It would be a great thing, of course, to be a senator's wife and the
mistress of such a house as the Palazzo Pignaver, which she had first
entered as a little orphan waif ten years ago. But to be kissed daily,
even on the forehead, by her Uncle Michele, would be a high price to pay
for greatness. She supposed that he would kiss her every day when she
was married, for t