While the young man was thus meditating, on his road to Norwood, Riccabocca and his Jemima were close conferring in their drawing-room. And if you could have seen them, reader, you would have been seized with equal surprise and curiosity: for some extraordinary communication had certainly passed between them. Riccabocca was evidently much agitated, and with emotions not familiar to him. The tears stood in his eyes at the same time that a smile, the reverse of cynical or sardonic, curved his lips; while his wife was leaning her head on his shoulder, her hand clasped in his, and, by the expression of her face, you might guess that he had paid her some very gratifying compliment, of a nature more genuine and sincere than those which characterized his habitual hollow and dissimulating gallantry. But just at this moment Giacomo entered, and Jemima, with her native English modesty, withdrew in haste from Riccabocca's sheltering side.
"Padrone," said Giacomo, who, whatever his astonishment at the connubial position he had disturbed, was much too discreet to betray it,—"Padrone, I see the young Englishman riding towards the house, and I hope, when he arrives, you will not forget the alarming information I gave to you this morning."
"Ah, ah!" said Riccabocca, his face falling. "If the signorina were but married!"
"My very thought,—my constant thought!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "And you really believe the young Englishman loves her?"
"Why else should he come, Excellency?" asked Giacomo, with great naivete.
"Very true; why, indeed?" said Riccabocca. "Jemima, I cannot endure the terrors I suffer on that poor child's account. I will open myself frankly to Randal Leslie. And now, too, that which might have been a serious consideration, in case I return to Italy, will no longer stand in our way, Jemima."
Jemima smiled faintly, and whispered something to Riccabocca, to which he replied,
"Nonsense, anima mia. I know it will be,—have not a doubt of it.
I tell you it is as nine to four, according to the nicest calculations.
I will speak at once to Randal. He is too young, too timid to speak
himself."
"Certainly," interposed Giacomo; "how could he dare to speak, let him love ever so well?"
Jemima shook her head.