"So soon?" asked Diana. "But I have seen nothing of you, dear boy!"
"Why not come with me to Sorrento? Do come,—there is room for us all, and for all your servants into the bargain, if you like to bring them."
Marcantonio was charmed with his idea; it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Besides, he had longed for an opportunity of bringing Diana and Leonora together. He was quite sure they would become bosom friends. Diana hung back, however, and was less enthusiastic.
"I do not see how I could manage it," she said. "I have so many things to do, and I must go back to Pegli, before long." Marcantonio sat down beside her and took her hand affectionately.
"Cara Diana," he said coaxingly, "will you not come and make friends with Leonora? It would be so kind of you, and she would feel it so much!"
Madame de Charleroi hesitated; not so much on account of her reluctance to stay with Leonora as because she knew that Julius Batiscombe was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Naples. She avoided him always, though she was his best and most faithful friend; for though she had loved him once, there was not a trace of that left in her heart, and yet she knew well enough that he loved her still. Her high and noble nature could not understand so earthly a man as he; she could not conceive how it was that through all his many affairs he still looked on her as the one woman in the world; but nevertheless she knew that it was so, and she therefore avoided him, not wishing to fan a hopeless passion. He came to see her sometimes, and she was very kind to him, giving him the best of advice, but she never encouraged him to come. So she was not anxious to meet him. But the question of her relations with her brother in the future seemed to make it now desirable that she should go with him and "make friends" with his wife, as he expressed it.
"Well," she said at last, "I will go with you, and do what you wish."
Marcantonio was very grateful. He felt that his young wife must have friends—young wives have so few—and he could desire no better friend for her than his sister, the model of all goodness, gentleness, and honour.
"Dearest sister," he said, "you are so good! And if you have much to do here, I can put off going for a day, you know. You can do your little errands in a day, can you not?"
"I might, perhaps," said she; "but must you not take some steps about all this land of yours—or of our uncle's? Do you realise what a position you have assumed, my dear boy? From this day you are absolutely master of the estate, if you like,—but you are also absolutely responsible for the payment of the income. You positively must see the lawyers about it, and you may as well see them at once."