"Benissimo!"
"Shall you be away all day?" said Lily tentatively. She had already learnt that Miss Stellenthorpe rather welcomed enquiries on subjects of which the importance apparently required an extreme reticence of reply.
A shade of gravity at once fell across her face. "Ah! who can tell? If the mission is to be successful, a day is not too long ... but I am very much afraid. Not fearful, you understand, cara, but—let me say—aware of responsibility—immense responsibility."
Lily felt that she, too, must look serious, in sympathy, and regretfully realized that Aunt Clo was about to rise abstractedly from the table, although her niece greatly desired another breakfast roll. Sometimes, interested in discussion, Aunt Clo would sit over a meal interminably, her elbows on the table, her hands supporting her keen, handsome face. At others, she would rise impatiently, flinging her napkin to the ground, and appearing regardless of the incompleteness of her niece's meal.
Lily had never yet found the necessary courage to remain in her place and continue stolidly to eat. Aunt Clo had a curious faculty for throwing into relief the grossness of material needs.
She now stood at the open window and addressed Lily slowly and sadly.
"Little one, do you know what it is to see a frail, foolish, lovely butterfly dashing itself against a lighted globe? To seek desperately to turn it elsewhere, to set it free into the cool, dark night outside—and yet to see it return again and again in search of its own destruction?"
Lily nodded. She always found it difficult to reply adequately in words when Aunt Clo became, as she often did, metaphorical.
"I go," said Miss Stellenthorpe, her hands extended, palms uppermost, "I go to try and deliver the butterfly from the lamp to-day. I can tell you no more, my Lily."
She left the house with the same mixture of portentous foreboding and exhilaration in her bearing, saying to Lily in farewell, as though her new simile still pleased her: