“Oh, yes—” and here followed details of old acquaintances and new pictures, to which Violante listened in silent wonder. The Greys were fond of little schemes and surprises, so they told their cousins nothing of the old acquaintance whom they expected them soon to meet; and nothing occurred to make all these perplexing novelties more perplexing still.
“Shall you be happy here, my darling?” said Rosa, anxiously, as, in the first interval of solitude, Violante sprang to her side and eagerly caressed her.
“Oh, yes!—yes!” said Violante; “quite happy when I see you. But how strange it would be to have so many sisters! How lousy they are, and how many things they can do! Rosa mia! I see now what everyone meant by saying that you were so English. But I like it.”
Violante’s life during the next week or two was not such as to make a figure in history. She was the prettiest plaything her cousins had ever seen. Her ignorance of ordinary life, her shy softness, and absence of self-assertion, made her seem to them as a specially-lovely kitten, and they never guessed that anything lay beneath. They interpreted all her actions in accordance with the impression that she had made on them. They were fond of reading aloud to each other, and when a passionate and mournful love-scene moved Violante, unused to the echoes of her own heart, to tears and blushes, they laughed at her naïveté and simplicity. When she shrank from questions about her theatrical life they concluded that she had nothing to tell of it, and they treated the idea of her teaching Italian at school as an absurd joke.
“But I must earn my living,” said Violante, gravely.
“You earn your living—you kitten!” said Beatrice.
“Yes—one must do something, and I cannot sing—or marry,” said Violante, and her cousins’ laughter at what seemed to the foreign girl a perfectly natural suggestion blinded them to the fact that there was more knowledge of the struggle of life in her words than had ever come to them over their drawing-room carpets. But they taught her to talk, and diminished her shyness so that she could not have been in a better atmosphere.
To Rosa the life came with no strangeness; rather her four years of Italy were like a dream. Surely—surely it was but yesterday that she had trimmed her dresses for other parties at the Stanforths’ and Comptons’, where Lucy was then so anxious to go. Was there now nothing to give the old zest to her preparations? Only the desire to set off Violante, and to see her enjoying herself. But Rosa’s world was, indeed, full of “other folks;” and she did not decide on her actions with regard to herself. And great questions were agitating themselves in her mind during these early and apparently peaceful days. Her aunt told her of the fortunate opening which she had found for her at Mrs Bosanquet’s.
“And you see, my dear, the money is as much as you would get anywhere. You could continue it if your father does come to England in the spring, as he proposes. It leaves you time for a few occasional pupils, and you would have your evenings at home—an inestimable advantage if Violante is with you.”
“I know my father thinks that, if her voice returns and we stay in England, she might sing at concerts and oratorios. But I don’t think she will ever be able to do anything in public.”