“Let me beg of you not to be uneasy, dear lady,” he said, seriously. “The young lady in question left England nearly a week ago, and there is no chance of our friend Cecil meeting her until it is too late.”
“Too late?” she echoed, raising her eyes to his face.
“Yes,” he smiled. “Until he is married.”
She let her hand fall from the mantel shelf, and a warm crimson flooded her face, and he chuckled, unctuously.
“I am quite sure it is time dear Cecil ‘ranged himself,’ as the French say; it really is time he was married and settled down. Don’t you agree with me? Ah, I see it is too delicate a subject. Well, good-morning, dear lady. Accept my profound homage and admiration for your courage and generosity in our dear young friend’s behalf,” and with another chuckle he smiled himself out of the room.
CHAPTER XXV.
AS IN A DREAM.
“There is no place like Florence,” said Lady Despard, in her soft, languorous voice. “One gets tired of London, and Paris, and Venice! I always fancy, when I’m there, that I’m living somewhere in Regent’s Park, near the canal, you know; and, as for the country in England, you either get burned up by the heat or drowned by the rain. But Florence”—she paused, and sighed contentedly—“oh, it’s always delicious!”
She was lying in a hammock, swung between two laburnums, on the lawn in front of the Villa Rimini, and she addressed Doris, who sat on the ground, with an open book in her lap, but with her eyes fixed dreamily on the exquisite view, which stretched out in an endless vista of grassy plains, and violet-tinted hills, over which the full moon was shedding its silvery light.
The soft evening breeze came to the two women, laden with flowers, as with an offering; there were flowers everywhere; in the long beds, starring the velvety lawns; on the banks, which ran along the limits of the garden; in huge jardinieres, on the terraces and balconies; on the plains, which lay like embroidered cloths beneath them, and over the hills, to which they lent color and perfume.