“I must find out,” she said to herself gravely.
Her grandmother greeted them with a smile.
“We were coming,” she said, “but I have been reading my book, and you have skipped all the improving pages.”
“Do you mean Murray?” asked Sylvia innocently.
“Sylvia knows that my grandmother and her Murray are inseparable,” hastily interposed Teresa. She need not have minded. Wilbraham was looking at the girl with a pleased satisfaction. He thought that women were much alike, except that some were prettier than others. Mrs Brodrick laughed, and did not resent her granddaughter’s explanation, but her eyes were grave and looked as if she, too, were observing. Teresa saw this, and saw that another had hit upon her discovery. She was very swift in carrying out her impulses, and she made up her mind that if Sylvia really liked this man her part must be to smooth matters for her happiness. The thought she flung at Wilbraham was tinged with a slight wonder, but his action was his own affair. She would do what seemed best for her sister.
“You are right, granny,” she said, “we have wasted our time disgracefully. It was my fault. Sylvia wanted to come and be informed. So now!”
“Now we will have our food. All that I have heard has made me hungry.” She spoke lightly, but her old eyes were still grave, and Teresa could see that what had come to them both was troubling her grandmother. The consciousness of this roused a reckless spirit in herself. Wilbraham, who was not a keen-witted man where women were concerned, knew nothing more than that this luncheon of theirs, taken on a grassy hillock with the river close beneath the bank, and red ruins lying in sunlight, was pleasanter than anything he had experienced of late. He connected it with Sylvia, who sat beside him, and chirruped cheerful truisms. Mrs Brodrick, who knew better, watched Teresa.
They strolled about afterwards, and went back through the ruins to fetch a young guide, who came out to them pale with ague. Teresa contrived that Wilbraham and Sylvia should be much together, but never alone. She fastened all her attention upon her sister, many times interposing with some guiding remark, only to slip again easily out of the conversation. They went into the little temple of Mithras, which interested Wilbraham immensely.
“Sylvia never heard of Mithras,” reflected Teresa uneasily, and, while the younger girl opened an inquiring mouth, struck in with an intentionally ignorant question. Wilbraham answered, and Sylvia drank in his words without in the least understanding them. But Wilbraham was one of those men with whom attention is prized beyond intelligence, or perhaps supposed to represent the same quality.
Then they talked of the leading impression which touches us in such places as Ostia, where a far past reigns.