"
The Roman season was at its height, when there arose a good deal of talk
about a lady who did not belong to that world in which Mrs. Granger lived,
but who yet excited considerable curiosity and interest therein.
She was a Spanish dancer, known as Donna Rita, and had been creating a
_furore_ in St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over the civilised world, in
fact, except in London, where she was announced as likely to appear during
the approaching season. She had taken the world by storm by her beauty,
which was exceptional, and by her dancing, which made up in _chic_ for
anything it may have lacked in genius. She was not a Taglioni; she was only
a splendid dark-haired woman, with eyes that reminded one of Cleopatra, a
figure that was simply perfection, the free grace of some wild creature of
the forest, and the art of selecting rare and startling combinations of
colour and fabric for her dress.
She had hired a villa, and sent a small army of servants on before her to
take possession of it--men and women of divers nations, who contrived to
make their mistress notorious by their vagaries before she arrived to
astonish the city by her own eccentricities. One day brought two pair of
carriage horses, and a pair of Arabs for riding; the next, a train of
carriages; a week after came the lady herself; and all Rome--English
and American Rome most especially--was eager to see her.
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