“He would much enjoy being so considered,” said Hugh, with a half smile; and then, to Violante, “Is that the great dress, signorina?”
“It is only a rehearsal for it,” said Rosa, as Violante only answered by a blush.
“No doubt it is all it should be,” said Hugh.
It was not a very complimentary speech, and Hugh offered no opinion as to the details of the dress. It were hard to say if he admired it. But Violante looked up at him and spoke.
“They don’t think it fine enough,” she said.
Hugh gave here a quick sudden glance, and a smile as if in sympathy either with the words or the tremulous voice that uttered them. Then he said something both commonplace and extravagant about painting the lily, which satisfied Signor Mattei, and astonished Rosa, who thought him a sensible young man, and, saying he was bound to meet his brother, he rather hastily took his leave.
Violante went into her own room and gladly took off Zerlina’s dress, for it was hot and heavy, and her shabby old muslin was far more comfortable. She pulled her soft hair out of the two long plaits into which Rosa had arranged it, and let it fall about her shoulders, and then she went to the window and looked out at the deep dazzling blue. She could see little else from the high casement but the carving of the little balcony round it, a long wreath of rich naturalistic foliage among which nestled a dove, with one of its wings broken. Violante’s pet creepers twined their green tendrils in and out among their marble likenesses, a crimson passion flower lay close to its white image, and sometimes a real pigeon lighted on the balcony and caressed the broken one with its wings. Violante encouraged the pigeons with crumbs and sweet noises, and trained her creepers round her own dove, making stories for it in a fanciful childish fashion, she would go and sing her songs to it, and treat it like a favourite doll. But she took no heed of it now, she gazed past it at the sky as if she saw a vision. She was not thinking of the brilliant dreaded future that lay before her, not consciously thinking of the scene just past. She was only feeling to her very finger tips the spell of one glance and smile. Poor Violante!