“All. Thank you again. That letter is a weight off my mind. I am sure he will answer it.”
“I fancy not, but, as I said, one can but try. Nothing more? Rest in the garden, Bice, and do not go again to the vineyards. You look tired and pale. Such walks as yesterday do you no good.”
“Rest!” she repeated impatiently. “You talk as if one could turn all the thoughts out of one’s head whenever one liked. That might be rest.”
“I wish you would let me do your thinking for you.”
He spoke tenderly, and she turned suddenly and looked at him. He could not understand her look, which was at once inquiring and reproachful, and, indeed, at this time all her thoughts were in a tangle. Doubts, suspicions, generous impulses, womanly pride, womanly fears, seemed to shake her very soul, and drive it on one side and the other. Sometimes she felt as if she had not a friend in the world, as if the only haven open to her was one she loathed. Even with Phillis it was all a strange inexplicable problem. Phillis had brought her sharpest pangs, yet attracted her irresistibly. Phillis, too, was unhappy, of that she was certain; yet something about her, something which Bice felt without being able to explain, gave her a sense of rest and confidence. It was as if she had an anchor which must keep her from the tossing of such storms as were driving poor Bice here and there. Vague thoughts came floating about her, half prayers, half resolutions, feeble and fluttering, yet real and therefore not in vain.
Chapter Ten.
Sans Partir Adieu!
Miss Cartwright was really ill. And of all who loved and cared for her, there was not one who showed more affection than Cartouche. They had thought that he was only a puppy, that nothing in the world was so much to him as a run by the Arno or a frolic in the Cascine woods, but now, when his mistress was ill, he could not be coaxed to either the one or the other. He watched at her door, and, if he could get the chance, crept into her room, and looked at her with questioning, loving eyes. Once when the doctor came to her bed, to his alarm there rose up a black form from the other side, growling angrily, and bent on resolute defence of his mistress. And another time they found that he had dragged together a heap of her shoes and slippers, over which he was keeping watch and ward. Phillis was a great deal with her, Miss Cartwright evidently liking the girl’s companionship, and watching her as she sat at the window with wistful interest.