"Well, perhaps you may some day."
"I should say not, Miss Adair.... No doubt an hour sometimes works wonderful revolutions, breaks down even the convictions of years; but, unless you can make me believe that black is white, I see no possibility of such a change as that."
"Alas! I am not an enchantress, but if I were one I should only have to touch your mental vision with a wand to make 'the scales fall' from it, and instead of making you believe that 'black is white'—which would be false—you would be enabled to see the snowy white of the mountain above you, whose very brilliancy before had dazzled you so that you called it black!"
"This is all very pretty and poetic, Miss Adair; more so, I fear, than true," he answered with a smile. Then turning to Mrs. Adair, he said, "But we have not arranged about the journey—where shall we meet?"
"Ah!" thought Flora, "I see he is determined to have as little of us as possible; he will not come with us now, but only meet us and see us across the pass; it is a sort of reparation for his speech at Mrs. Elton's; and yet, at times, he almost makes me think that it is something more, that he really likes to be with me; but of course it is not so, he merely prefers talking to me instead of to Marie, whom he considers a child. However, be his motive what it may, I should be content if the present could only last." She was so occupied with these thoughts that she scarcely heard her mother's answer: "Then if you will come and spend the evening with us, we can make all our plans comfortably."
"With pleasure," replied Mr. Earnscliffe; "and now would you like to have some singing? Although Byron says—
'In Venice Tasso's echoes are no more,
And songless rows the silent gondolier,'
memory is not quite dead; there are some who still love and remember those echoes."
They all expressed the great pleasure which they would have in hearing the songs, and Mr. Earnscliffe said to the foremost man, "Paolo,—Jacobo, I mean,—will you sing something for the ladies?" Then he added, "I am always calling him Paolo; it was the name of my favourite boatman at Capri. There is quite a story about his little child,—I must tell it to you some day, Miss Adair."
Notwithstanding all Flora's sage reasoning about his merely preferring to talk to her rather than to Marie, she felt a glow of pleasure steal over her as she observed that he almost always addressed her. "Thank you," she rejoined, "I shall be so glad to hear about Naples and its neighbourhood, particularly as I never expect to see it."