“Is he coming again soon? He is your relative, is he not?” persisted the contessa.
“He is Kitty’s cousin.”
It was the first time she had spoken as if Kitty and she were not absolutely one in their possessions, and her tone had an unwilling ring about it. Perhaps it piqued her friend’s curiosity, for she threw back her head, and said in a low amused voice—
“You are mysterious, carina. Is the subject too sacred to be discussed?”
The girl’s eyes flashed, she sprang up angry and impatient.
“Are we going to stay here all our lives?” she cried with a sharpness which cut poor Giovanni to the heart. If he had heard what had just passed he might have been better satisfied, but he had been looking another way, choosing some of the best figs for the beautiful Eve who had praised his little Paradise, and he heard nothing until there came this sharp, scornful speech, which made a desert of it all. Yet how lovely she looked standing there, her head thrown up, the exquisite outline of her profile clear against the golden sky! And when she turned, and saw the young fellow’s frightened face, her own melted, and a sudden smile dimpled her cheeks.
“Was I so rude, Giovanni?” she said gently, “I did not mean it, really. It has all been charming, delightful, only now it is time to go. Nina knows it, but she is lazy. I must be the one to tell you what is prudent. Come, Kitty, come, children, the reign of figs is over, but we will carry back a basket-full for mamma. She always says there are none like those which grow up here on Giovanni’s mountain.”
All the way home she was softer and gentler than Ibbetson had yet seen her. Pippa was tired, and nothing would please her but that Bice should carry her. The little creature, with her curly black hair, fell asleep in her arms, and the girl would not have her moved or awakened, walking on firmly and strongly with her burden. She led them down by another path, in spite of the contessa’s complaints that it was both longer and steeper.
“It will not harm you,” Bice said quietly, “and you will see something worth seeing.”
But it was not until they had turned a shoulder of the hill where, on a sort of stony terrace, a few old olives stood grey and shadowy in the midst of a flood of colour, that Ibbetson knew what she had brought him to see. For below, and stretched before him, spread that wonderful plain of Valdamo which is beyond the power of pen or pencil; and now, as it lay bathed in the radiance of the setting sun, he felt as if he had never before known its beauty. A haze, not of mist, but of colour, seemed to rest upon it, so delicate and so varied that its intensity was scarcely felt, and the villas and farms with which the plain is thickly studded gleamed like jewels in the midst of this wonderful setting. On the opposite hill rose Bellosguardo with its cypresses, those trees which throughout Italy give point and force to softer beauties; and below, the domes and towers of Florence lay in the full glory of the sunset lights.