“They 've been very cool towards us of late.”
“As much our fault as theirs, George; some, certainly, was my own.”
“Oh, Vickars has heard of her. He says here, 'Is the Lady Augusta Bramleigh, who has a villa at Albano, any relative of your neighbor Colonel Bramleigh? She is very eccentric,—some say mad; but she does what she likes with every one. Try and procure a letter to her.'”
“It's all as well as settled, George. We 'll be cantering over that swelling prairie before the spring ends,” said she. Quietly rising and going over to the piano, she began one of those little popular Italian ballads which they call “Stornelli,”—those light effusions of national life which blend up love and flowers and sunshine together so pleasantly, and seem to emblematize the people who sing them.
“Thither, oh, thither, George! as the girl sings in Goethe's ballad. Won't it be delightful?”
“First let us see if it be possible.”
And then they began one of those discussions of ways and means which, however, as we grow old in life, are tinged with all the hard and stern characters of sordid self-interest, are in our younger days blended so thoroughly with hope and trustfulness that they are amongst the most attractive of all the themes we can turn to. There were so many things to be done, and so little to do them with, that it was marvellous to hear of the cunning and ingenious devices by which poverty was to be cheated out of its meanness, and actually imagine itself picturesque. George was not a very imaginative creature; but it was strange to see to what flights he rose as the sportive fancy of the high-spirited girl carried him away to the region of the speculative and the hopeful.
“It's just as well, after all, perhaps,” said he, after some moments of thought, “that we had not invested your money in the mine.”
“Of course, George, we shall want it to buy vines and orange-trees. Oh, I shall grow mad with impatience if I talk of this much longer! Do you know,” said she, in a more collected and serious tone, “I have just built a little villa on the lake-side of Albano? And I'm doubting whether I 'll have my 'pergolato' of vines next to the water, or facing the mountain. I incline to the mountain.”
“We mustn't dream of building,” said he, gravely.