‘Are they?’ cried she. ‘Per Dio, I believe they are.’
‘Well, let’s talk of him no more. I only mentioned his name because I feared you loved him, Marietta.’
‘And if I had!’ asked she, with a half-malicious drollery in her dark eyes.
‘Then I ‘d have hated him all the more—hated you, perhaps, too.’
‘Poverino!’ said she, with a sigh which ended in a laugh.
And now they walked along, side by side, while she told Gerald all about her life, her companions, their humours, their habits, and their ways. She liked Babbo. He was kind-hearted and affectionate; but Donna Gaetana was all that was cruel and unfeeling. Chico, indeed, had always resisted her tyranny, and she counselled Gerald to do the same. ‘As for me,’ added she sorrowfully, ‘I am but a girl, and must bear with her.’
‘But I’ll stand by you, Marietta,’ cried Gerald boldly. ‘We ‘ll see if the world won’t go better with each of us as we meet it thus,’ and he drew her arm around his waist, while he clasped hers with his own.
And what a happy hour was that as thus they rambled along under the leafy shade, no sound but the wild wood-pigeon’s cry to break the silence! for often they were silent with thoughts deeper than words could render. She, full of that future where Gerald was to be the companion of all her games; he, too, ranging in fancy over adventures wherein, as her protector and defender, he confronted perils unceasingly. Then he bethought him how strangely destiny should have thus brought them together, two forsaken, friendless creatures.
One falls in love at eighteen, at eight-and-twenty, and at eight-and-forty, with very different reasons for the process. Silky hair, and long eye-lashes, and pearly teeth get jostled as we go on through life, with thoughts of good connections and the three per cents., and a strange compromise is effected between inclination and self-interest. To know, however, the true ecstasy of the passion, to feel it in all its impulsive force, and in the full strength of its irresponsibility, be very young and very poor—young enough to doubt of nothing, not even yourself; poor enough to despise riches most heartily.
Gerald was young and poor. His mind, charged with deep stores of sentiment, was eagerly seeking where to invest its wealth. The tender pathos of St. Pierre, the more dangerous promptings of Rousseau, were in his heart, and he yearned for one to whom he could speak of the feelings that struggled within him. As for Marietta, to listen to him was ecstasy. The glowing language of poetry, its brilliant imagery, its melting softness, came upon her like refreshing rain upon some arid soil, scorched and sun-stricken: her spirit, half-crushed beneath daily hardships, rose at once to the magic touch of ennobling sentiment. Oh! what a new world was that which now opened before them: how beautiful, how bright, how full of tenderness, how rich in generous emotions!