"Oh—glad of course!" returned Beatrice, with a bitter little laugh. "A marriage should always be a matter for rejoicing. Why should you not be glad—like every one else?"
"Like you, Signorina?" asked Teresina with a glance at the young girl's face.
"Yes: Like me." And Beatrice laughed again in the same way.
"Very well, Signorina. I will be as glad as you are. I shall find it very easy."
It was Beatrice's turn to look at her, which she did, rather suspiciously. It was clear enough that the girl had her doubts.
"Just as glad as you are, Signorina, and no more," said Teresina again, in a lower voice, as though she were speaking to herself.
Beatrice said nothing in answer. As they reached the end of the path through the garden, they saw Ruggiero and his brother sitting as usual by the porter's lodge. Both got up and came quickly forward. Bastianello took the bag from Teresina's hand, and the maid and the two sailors followed Beatrice at a little distance as she descended the inclined tunnel.
It was pleasant, a few minutes later, to lie in the cool clear water and look up at the blue sky above and listen to the many sounds that came across from the little harbour. Beatrice felt a sense of rest for the first time in several days. She loved the sea and all that belonged to it, for she had been born within sight of it and had known it since she had been a child, and she always came back to it as to an element that understood her and which she understood. She swam well and loved the easy, fluent motion she felt in the exercise, and she loved to lie on her back with arms extended and upturned face, drinking in the light breeze and the sunshine and the deep blue freshness of sky and water.
While she was bathing Bastianello and Teresina sat together behind the bathing-house, but Ruggiero retired respectfully to a distance and busied himself with giving his little boat a final washing, mopping out the water with an old sponge, which he passed again and again over each spot, as though never satisfied with the result. He would have thought it bad manners indeed to be too near the bathing-place when Beatrice was in swimming. But he kept an eye on Teresina, whom he could see talking with his brother, and when she went into the cabin, he knew that Beatrice had finished her bath, and he found little more to do in cleaning the old tub, which indeed, to a landsman's eye, presented a decidedly smart appearance in her new coat of white paint, with a scarlet stripe. When he had finished, he sauntered up to the wooden bridge that led to the bathing cabins and sat down on the upper rail, hooking one foot behind the lower one. Bastianello, momentarily separated from Teresina, came and stood beside him.
"A couple of fenders would save the new paint on her, if we are going for crabs," he observed, thoughtfully.