“Does that mean that I’m to go?” he asked, rising in his turn.
“It means that I am going.”
“And to-morrow?”
“Oh, settle with Sylvia,” she said impatiently.
They filled two carriages, a big and a little one. Teresa was with Colonel Maxwell in the smaller, and he thought her preoccupied when he thought about it, which was not often. It was true that she did not comment as freely as usual upon what they passed, though masses of lovely flowers were grouped round the Boat fountain, models sat about on the Trinita steps, a man in the piazza was binding together rough and ready brooms for his dust-cart out of a sort of golden ling, a line of scarlet German students lit up the gloomy Babuino, and out in the Popolo they came upon a blaze of sunshine, hot enough even to warm the heart of the old obelisk.
“By Jove, when all’s said and done, it’s a fine world!” commented Colonel Maxwell suddenly.
“A very tangled one,” threw back Teresa. “I wish you would tell me what to do with it?”
“I?” he laughed. “That’s a largish order. You seem to be doing it tolerably well between you, just at present. A fortune and a wedding all in one winter. Wilbraham’s a very good chap,” he added, thinking she might require reassurance. “He wants knowing, as I daresay you’ve found out, but he’s worth the trouble. And a happy marriage will give him just what he needs to rub off pounds of his mother’s spoiling.” Teresa hesitated. She was in a perplexed mood, and advice seemed the one thing to help her, as it sometimes seems until we have got it.
“Do you think him clever?” she asked with apparent inconsequence.
“Don’t you?”