Clarissa gave one of her little Parisian shrieks.
"Ouiche! it is not Aldo—it is you who are brave! Aldo is as cautious as a hare, but, being a preposterous poseur, he would not miss an effect for worlds!" And Clarissa flourished an imaginary hat in the Della Rocca style.
Nancy laughed, and believed not a word about the hare.
When they left her at her door she answered his sweeping salutation with a serious little nod; she ran up the stairs hurriedly, and into her room. On her writing-table lay an unopened letter from Nino; he wrote to her every morning and called on her every afternoon.
Nancy did not glance at it. She ran out on to the balcony. But the stanhope had already turned out of sight.
Nancy stepped back into her room and slowly drew off her gloves. For some unexplained reason she was glad that her wrists still ached, and that her fingers were bruised by the dragging of the hard, stiff reins.
From the open balcony the wind blew into the room, and scattered the papers on her writing-table. It blew away Nino's letter; it blew away the elaborate time-table she had drawn up and the lists of the work she was to do; it blew away the large white sheet of paper—the fair sheet full of resplendent possibilities—on which she had traced with reverent finger the sign of the cross.
XIII
When the Englishman called again to bring her a copy of the Fortnightly with the article on "An Italian Lyrist," he found that she had not worked at all; she looked as sweet and helpless and idle as ever, and the room was full of visitors. He was introduced to her mother, whom he found gentle and subdued, and to the vigorous, loud-voiced Aunt Carlotta, and to all the poets.