“Is it so like?” asked Bice eagerly. “Kitty never told me that it was. I shall come here often.”
“You have a great fancy for England, and yet you might be content with your own country,” said Jack smiling.
“England is my country,” she said, and it was then the red began to deepen in her cheeks.
“But you are a Capponi?”
She stopped and faced him, her eyes flashing, her whole figure quivering.
“Who told you so?” she cried angrily. “It was that old Andrea, I am certain. I will not have it. I am not Capponi any longer. I am English, and English only.”
She kept away from him for some time after this outburst, though he tried more than once to make his peace. It was only after he had pointedly called her by her mother’s name that she relented and became friendly again.
The podere lay some way up the hill which they were climbing. At last they reached it; a picturesque building well baked by the sun, with a low tower, tiled, a round arch or two, and deep eaves. Outside stood beautiful great oxen with wide-spreading horns, and two or three children were watching and ran eagerly to fetch the contadino. When he had come out and had spoken a few words to his padrone, young Moroni, the latter led the way to a door in the wall, within which was a kind of rough garden, full of fig-trees laden with fruit. One or two brown-faced boys came running with tables and chairs.
“Ah! but this is truly idyllic, my Giovanni,” said the young countess, sinking into a chair. “If I must confess the truth, I could not have walked another ten steps.”
She was not exactly pretty, but slender and fragile-looking, and she generally contrived to do as much as she liked and no more. Her fierce husband adored and petted her, and she was very fond of him and of the children, whom she expected him to keep in order or amuse as the case might be. Wherever she was she liked to form the centre, and now she managed to draw them all round her, except Bice. Bice strolled away alone towards the other end of the garden, here and there picking a rose, or one of the half-wild flowers which grew without care just as they had been stuck in. The girl was in a strange and dissatisfied mood that day; it seemed as if different strings were vibrating together, making odd discords and harmonies. Some had been set in motion by things which Ibbetson had said the day before, others had been touched and jarred, she scarcely knew how or why: questions and perplexities seemed to have awakened just at the moment when she had intended them to be silent. From that father from whose memory she shrank she had inherited many characteristics: among them a strong will, and a desire to thrust whatever was painful to her out of sight. “Why should I be obliged to remember now?” her heart cried out angrily, as she turned and looked at the gay little group, already beckoning to her to return to them. “Give is Kitty’s own brother, and she is not thinking about him, and Oliver has not come yet, and things are not worse than they were yesterday, when I was not half so unhappy. And to-day I meant to enjoy myself and to forget it all. Why does it come back now?”