High up above the thirty-foot retaining-wall, behind its palms and pollard acacias, the chalet was pouring forth a stream of light from its open door. The faithful Luigi was evidently sitting up for her.
Amaldi stepped out and held out his hand to her. Sophy was close to Amaldi on the narrow plank of the banchetta. That look in his face hurt her. Then his eyes turned suddenly away.
"Thank your mother for me, please, Marchese," she said, "for the lovely day she gave me, and for lending me her cloak."
She slipped it from her shoulders as she spoke and put it, all warm with herself, into Amaldi's arms. He shivered as he felt the warmth of the folds under his hands. Murmuring some civil commonplace, he stood aside to let her pass. She went up the little pathway followed by Luigi.
As she entered the doorway in the terrace-wall, the clock in the Campanile of San Maurizio, on the hill above, began slowly striking midnight. Amaldi stood until it had finished, then started the Fretta's engine. He sat with one hand upon the wheel, the other grasping the folds of the grey cloak. Suddenly he bent and pressed his face upon it. It was still warm, and this warmth gave forth a fresh, faint scent of citron....
XXXV
That day at Le Vigne was the beginning of a very happy period for Sophy. Not only was she infatuated with Italy, but her pleasure in it was doubled by the fact that she had two such charming friends to share it with her, to reveal it to her from within as it were. The Marchesa had perforce to accept Sophy's invitation to lunch with her at Villa Bianca—Amaldi was of course asked, too. His mother was much reassured by the perfect composure of his manner on this occasion and on others that followed in natural sequence. But what gave her the greatest feeling of security was Sophy herself. No woman in the least éprise with a man could show such perfect, cordial liking for him in his mother's presence. Such was the Marchesa's opinion.
And she began to think that she might have been mistaken also about Marco. His manner, the evening that she had spoken to him on this subject, might very well have resulted from his intense dislike of personal discussions. He had always been astringently reserved, even in childhood. Altogether the Marchesa felt immensely relieved, though she did not relax a whit of her precaution. She was always one of the party on the pleasant trips they took to different points of interest on the lake, that Samuel Butler justly calls "so far the most beautiful of all even the Italian lakes."
Sophy could scarcely realise now those ghastly days at Dynehurst when the never ceasing rain had made misery more miserable. Only when Anne Harding's letters came, as they did about once a week, and when she wrote herself to Cecil, was she plucked for a moment from her joyous illusion of a new existence that might go sparkling on indefinitely. And she began to take a quiet delight in her growing knowledge of Amaldi's character. They spoke to each other without words sometimes, for they had grown to know strangely well how certain things would impress them both. Indeed Sophy did not at all realise how she had come to count on Amaldi's companionship, until one afternoon, when going down to the banchetta to join the Marchesa for one of their jaunts, she saw that he was not with her.