“Oh, Sylvia,” she said reproachfully—“when I wanted you to rest! And you haven’t even the excuse of a thunderstorm,” she added, pulling down her defence from the window, “for it has not come.”
“But it is coming, eccellenza,” said Nina, joining her and speaking in a low voice. “It is coming in less than three hours. And there will be enough of it. It will keep people in the house to-night, that is one good thing.”
“Why?” laughed Teresa.
Nina’s face expressed blank unconsciousness.
“Why? Who knows! We have a saying in my country, eccellenza, that where the eye does not see, mischief will not reach. A foolish saying, eh-h-h-h-h! But there are foolish ones everywhere, even at Viterbo.”
“Get up and dress, Sylvia,” said her sister cheerfully. “And put on your prettiest frock.”
But Sylvia for once was determined to wear nothing but a black which she generally hated.
“What does it matter?” reflected Teresa. And yet she was wrong.
Two or three Austrians had arrived that afternoon, so that there was a larger company than usual at the table, where great bunches of white and purple irises were stuck at intervals. The Maxwells came in late and tired, having climbed to the castle at the back of Taormina. Teresa was glad that Mary was thinking more of her fatigue and her dinner than of Sylvia’s affairs, and that the talk contrived to be general. It grew early dark, for the sky was by this time heavy with cloud, and thunder was muttering. The little Hungarian doctor and his wife were smoking cigarettes. Maxwell and Wilbraham had got hold of an English newspaper; Maxwell was confounding his own luck in not having his juniors’ chances over some of the little wars which England was waging, and Wilbraham answering at long intervals. Teresa took Mary Maxwell in hand, and goaded herself into sympathy over an account of her woes with her mother-in-law, hoping to leave Sylvia to talk or not as she liked. She found her work hard, for Mrs Maxwell was far too shrewd to put up with a perfunctory attention, and Teresa’s own mind was running through many sensations. She could not be sure how much Sylvia felt, how it would affect her; whether the kind of light chatter, into which she heard her break, acted as a relief or carried danger. She was sure that Wilbraham would construe it into the indifference of a trivial nature, and was torn between her desire that he should hold Sylvia less lightly and satisfaction that he could not believe himself mourned. The idea that it was she, she, whom ironical fate had chosen to interpose between Sylvia’s image and Wilbraham’s heart, made her coldly, cruelly contemptuous. That he should dream!
“I shall go to bed,” yawned Mrs Maxwell, “though I don’t believe I shall be able to sleep a wink. Shall I take Jem away? He is such a blind old goose, he never sees that he is monopolising our lovers. But Sylvia is in high spirits to-night.”