But had Mrs Brodrick been in the room, she would have observed that he begged his pardon from Teresa.
If the first day carried with it a touch of uneasiness, those that followed swept by for some of them in a dream of enchantment.
The Castello-a-mare, where they were, stands a little out of the town, perched on the very top of the road which zigzags up from the station. And the view! There, ever-changing in colour, its blue and opal and tenderest green melting through each other or growing into dazzling brightness, lies the most classical of seas; far away behind a fine sweep of coast is Syracuse, a nearer promontory marks the first settlement of Greeks in Calypso’s lovely island; to your right, sweeps up the great volcano, with heart of fire and crest of snow, and all the foreground is broken and steep, with growth of almonds, and fennel, and tree-spurge. Sometimes the outlook is radiant beyond words; it is often so at sunrise, when Etna has flung off clouds, and his eternal snows flush rosy pink above the soft blue mists of the plain. Then everything is so light, so fresh, so sparkling, that it will make even a tired heart believe the old world and all its life is young again. But there are other times when storms rush madly forwards, and the sea grows grey, and the slopes of Etna are sullen purple, and wind and rain battle each other passionately on the heights of Taormina. You look with fear, and lo, the fierce southern rage is over, the clouds are gone, and, faint and lovely at first, presently out laughs the ethereal blue again.
A sketching fever possessed Donna Teresa. The others, clambering up and down the dirty, narrow, stony lanes, would come upon her sitting alone and profoundly content before some arcaded window set in a wall, an orange-tree peeping from behind the dainty centre shaft, unbroken blue above. Or she might be found under Duca Stefano’s tower, peaceful now after, so says tradition, its strange and wicked cruelties, where, for a few soldi, you may rest undisturbed in a wilderness garden, and look through palms at a luminous sea, or at queer corners of houses with deep eaves and wooden balconies, where bright rags flutter, vines clamber, and women lean for gossip. High behind is a sweep of arid hill, rough with prickly pear, and catching the shadow of every passing cloud and the glory of the sun as it sinks behind Etna.
And it was for these minutes that Wilbraham—as yet unconsciously—lived.
Then one day he came upon her in the Greek theatre.
Little of the Greek is left, except here and there a white pillar, or a slab built into the wall, for where marble had shone the Romans have set their brickwork. But who can quarrel with brick which takes such glory of colour and offers such crannies for tufted weeds, hanging in delicate masses of yellow, white, and green? Teresa had laid down her brushes, and with her chin resting on her hands was looking through a nobly-rounded arch at that view which is surely all but satisfying. White clouds wrapped Etna, but between them pierced an occasional whiteness which was not cloud, and, below, the purple slopes swept in great curves, taking strange greens and violets as they advanced. Only one building broke their line, the Dominican monastery, and that, with the mysterious gloom of fading day upon it, and the ground falling precipitously in front, did no more than add a suggestive human interest to the grandeur it shared.
The spot always moved Teresa, but she liked to keep her emotions to herself; and as Wilbraham came towards her, she sprang to her feet, and began to gather two or three of the dwarf irises which starred the grass.
“Are you going?” he said in a disappointed tone. “Have you finished painting so soon?”
“I refuse to caricature, and so I haven’t begun,” she replied with a gay laugh. “What have you done with Sylvia?”