“You know him, then?”
“Why don’t you say whatever you have to say?” said Ethelbert simply.
“If I did, I should say that you gave him a rosebud and loaned him a volume of Petrarch’s ‘De Vita Solitaria,’ and that he loves you, and is sick, paralyzed, dying!—and wants to see you,” she said with Italian impetuosity, leaning more and more toward Ethelbert, trying to shock the secret out of her, with each added word. “You know him, you gave him the rosebud—the book?”
“I spoke to him for the first time yester-morn. I have seen him several times. I gave him the rosebud; I did not loan him the book.” She laid her cool hand on this woman’s burning hot hand, saying: “He is nothing to me more than any and every human being is. Any child five years old, with beautiful possibilities, is more interesting.”
“Then why pin a rosebud on his coat?”
“He pinned it there as a sort of symbol of his lost sweet childhood, which he wishes he could regain, and which I think he could.”
“O, this is stupidity!” said Mrs. Mancredo in quick Italian. “We all know that can never be done! What is he, that he should have his childhood back again, more than I should—more than thousands? No! he has made his bed, and there he shall lie upon it, a paralyzed idiot, for what I know. He is a bad man! Do you understand what that means? And he is a rich bad man, and his visits to this simple house and to you mean no good! Do you understand that?”
“I understand you,” said Ethelbert, rising and looking down upon her visitor, “but you don’t understand me, and cannot. Till you have known me a long while, you will misinterpret everything I say or do.”
“How old are you?” was the next angry question.
“Ages old. I am able to help you and this sick friend of yours. I am sorry for your trouble,” said Ethelbert, with a divine pity in her voice and look, and an uplifting power going forth like a cooling shadow displacing the glare and scorch of passion; until, in the cool of it, the tears which, unshed, had burned Mrs. Mancredo’s eyes ever since she had seen Reginald groping upstairs the night before his shock, came forth, relieving her spirit.