"I suppose you are so accustomed to it, Beatrice, that it does not make much impression upon you," continued the first speaker, her glance as she spoke resting not upon her companion, but upon the lovely levels beneath, with the violet-hued mountains rising softly up round about them, so softly that one forgot they were mountains until the eye caught the gleam of snow on the summits towards the east. There was a pause after this question, and it lasted so long that the questioner at length removed her eyes from the landscape and turned them upon her friend; to her surprise she saw that the friend was blushing.
"Why, Beatrice!" she exclaimed, "is it possible—"
"No," said Beatrice, "it is not possible. I know that I am blushing; but you must not think too much of that. I am not as strong as I was, and blush at everything; I am taking iron for it. In the present case, it only means that—" She paused.
"That you like him," suggested the other, smiling.
"I like a number of persons," said Mrs. Lovell, tranquilly, gazing in her turn down the broad, slightly winding valley, dotted with its little white villages, and ending in a soft blue haze, through which the tawny Arno, its course marked by a line of tall, slender, lightly foliaged, seemingly branchless trees, like tall rods in leaf, went onward towards the west.
"I know you do," said the first speaker. "And I really wish," she added, with a slight touch of vehemence, "that your time would come—that I should see you at last liking some one person really and deeply and jealously, and to the exclusion of all the rest."
"I don't know why you should wish me unhappiness, Margaret. You have beautiful theories, I know; but in my experience" (Mrs. Lovell slightly underlined this word as if in opposition to the "theories" of her friend) "the people who have those deeper sort of feelings you describe are almost always very unhappy."
Margaret turned her head, and looked towards the waving line of the Carrara mountains; in her eyes there was the reflection of a sudden inward pain. But she knew that she could indulge in this momentary expression of feeling; the mountains would not betray her, and the friend by her side did not realize that anything especial could have happened to "Margaret." In excuse for Mrs. Lovell it may be said that so much that was very especial had always happened, and still continued to happen, to her, that she had not much time for the more faintly colored episodes of other people.
Beatrice Lovell was an unusually lovely woman. The adjective is here used to signify that she inspired love. Not by an effort, word, action, or hardly interest of her own; but simply because she was what she was. Her beauty was not what is called striking; it touched the eye gently at first, but always grew. People who liked to analyze said that the secret lay in the fact that she had the sweetness, the tints, the surface texture as it were, and even sometimes the expression, of childhood still; and then, when you came to look deeper, you found underneath all the richer bloom of the woman. Her golden hair, not thick or long, but growing in little soft wavelets upon her small head; her delicate rose-leaf skin, showing the blue veins; her little teeth and the shape of her sweet mouth—all these were like childhood. In addition, she was dimpled and round, with delicately cut features, and long-lashed violet eyes, in whose soft depths lay always an expression of gentle trust. This beautiful creature was robed to-day in widow's mourning-garb made in the severest fashion, without one attempt to decorate or lighten it. But the straight-skirted, untrimmed garments, the little close bonnet, and the heavy veil pinned over it with straight crape-pins, only brought out more vividly the tints of her beauty.
"No," she continued, as her companion did not speak, "I by no means wish for the feelings you invoke for me. I am better off as I am; I keep my self-possession. For instance, I told this Sicily person that it was in very bad taste to speak to me in that way at such a time—so soon after Mr. Lovell's death; and that I was much annoyed by it."