She smiled at everything in life, especially the things she did n't like and which kept her talent for mendacity in healthy exercise.

A glance, a word, a motion was sufficient to make her show her teeth at you like a cheerful she-wolf.

This inexpugnable smile constituted her whole vocabulary in her dealings with her melancholy mistress, to whom she had been bequeathed by the late occupant of the apartment, and who, to Rowland's satisfaction, promised to be diverted from her maternal sorrows by the still deeper perplexities of Maddalena's theory of roasting, sweeping, and bed-making.
Rowland took rooms at a villa a trifle nearer Florence, whence in the summer mornings he had five minutes' walk in the sharp, black, shadow-strip projected by winding, flower-topped walls, to join his friends.

The life at the Villa Pandolfini, when it had fairly defined itself, was tranquil and monotonous, but it might have borrowed from exquisite circumstance an absorbing charm.

If a sensible shadow rested upon it, this was because it had an inherent vice; it was feigning a repose which it very scantily felt.