"Hush!" he said, in a low voice: "you forget—the dead!"
"No," she retorted, the two bright spots burning fiercely on her cheeks, her eyes glittering like dagger-points; "I hate her more now she is dead, for if she had lived he would have tired of her, but now she comes between us like a ghost; and you cannot get rid of that for me, even you, clever as you are, Austin!"
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
A month later, the sun, which in England was shining with a sickly affectation of geniality, was pouring a flood of warmth and light on every house and street in Naples. Color, warmth, brightness were all there, not in niggardly patches, but in lavish profusion, and in no spot of the enchanted city more profuse than in the palace in which resided the Earl and Countess of Ferrers; for to Naples they had come, and, needless to say, Mr. Austin with them.
But though he had prophesied that Violet should be happier there than she had ever been, his prophecy had not yet fulfilled itself, for even the Naples' sun could not thaw Blair's heart, and, as in England, there was still that weary, absent expression in his face which proclaims the man to whom life has become joyless and hopeless.
Of all the noble palaces which the Neapolitans so cheerfully let to the English visitors, the palace Austin Ambrose had chosen was the most sumptuous; and if rooms which emperors might have dwelt in, and surroundings which would have inspired a poet, could have made a woman happy, then Violet Countess of Ferrers should have been the most beatified of her sex. But on this glorious evening in spring, she was lying on her couch on the balcony overlooking the bay with the same restless fire in her eyes, the old red fever spots on her cheeks. Leaning over the balcony was Mr. Austin Ambrose attired in a spotless linen suit, with a cigar between his lips, and his eyes keenly noting the passers-by in the street beneath him.
"What are you staring at? Have you become suddenly dumb?" exclaimed Lady Violet, with irritability.
"I was looking at the beggars," he said, with a patience in a marked contrast to her impatience. "Naples is the paradise of the mendicant. Shall I wheel you nearer the balcony?—you would find them very amusing."
She looked over listlessly.