In this there was a seat concealed from view, even from the terrace, where I sat with the Prince while they went up for Will to be shown her saint. The Prince, desiring nothing so much as his sister’s marriage with Will, and being at this time, like many of the Sicilians, a violent adherent of English customs, was content to throw opportunity in their way. He and I smoked. What passed between Will and Rusidda I had from Will afterwards, rehearsed with growing excitement, but I dare swear without any embellishment from the imagination, of which Will possessed little.
“Well, W-Will,” she began, “now you have seen my home, and you know that it is not because you are poor that I fear to marry you. We live on maccaroni in order to have horses for the old coaches in our stable, and men to take us out. Were it not for the little salaries which we have from the Court, we could not buy ourselves a change of clothes, and even the Queen is not very good at paying. She would rather buy things, and give them to you when she is tired of them. And this, though the Ambassador’s wife is not too proud, a Princess of Favara—with an unconscious little access of hauteur—could not tolerate. Besides, picture me in a train of Her Majesty, who would make two of me!”
Then, suddenly springing up from her seat, she led him to another side of the belvedere—for such practically the shrine was—and pointed to a beautiful little lake. “That,” she said, “is the Mardolce, from which our family derives its name. Its founder was known in the Norman fashion as Tancredus de Mari Dulci; and that is where we shall have to come to, if we get much worse off.”
“Don’t, Rusidda!” he said, putting his arm round her to draw her back to their seat. A little shiver passed through him. True love can picture any far-fetched ill reaching the loved one.
“Oh, it is not very likely,” she said. “I am the only maid of honour the Queen has in Sicily: the others preferred facing the French to the sea-passage.”
At that moment, glancing through the balustrade of the belvedere, she caught sight of a well fed but badly shaved priest riding on a stout ass, which carried panniers piled up with various kinds of garden produce, as well as himself.
“That is the priest of S. Giovanni,” she said, with a curious look at the stout red-faced form in its stained, rusty black. “What a shock he would have if he saw you! It was he first told me the tradition of our house, that it would end with the love of a woman for a fair-haired stranger. But W-Will, dear,” she said, with a caressing look and remorseful voice—she was really fond of him, and it was the first time she had welcomed him as hostess in her own home—“I am safe, because I have tried so hard to love you, and cannot.”
“Why do you take such pleasure in torturing me, Rusidda? It is right that you should feel safe, but not for that reason. I am not a prince, and I cannot offer you a palace.”
“A palace!” she said: “a ruined village! My house is not large, but at any rate it is not in ruins, you were going to say.”
“Indeed, dear, I hope I shall never say anything to hurt you.”