“I—I don’t know,” vaguely. “I think—sometimes—places.”
The young marchesa who believed in romance, though her own was ended, looked at her anxiously.
“Is that all?”
“It’s a good deal. You can’t think how much there seems to say about Rome. And besides, he reads the newspaper.”
“Oh!” cried Teresa sharply.
“I don’t care about newspapers, generally, of course,” Sylvia went on, with her little air of finality, “but I like him to read them, because I can knit all the time, and count the stitches. One needn’t always attend.”
On the whole there was not much comfort to be got out of this conversation, except that the girl was quite unruffled by doubts. Teresa would have liked to have been as sure of Wilbraham, for her sympathies were too lively not to have often alarmed her. She tried to close her eyes, and to make the house as pleasant as she could for him, succeeding only too well.
“Let us go to-morrow to Villa Madama,” she said one Friday evening. Fernanda, with her broad smile, had just brought in the coffee, a log fire burnt merrily in the open stove, from the street rose a stir of voices, cracking of whips, cries of “Tribuna! Ecco Tribu—u—na!” “Polenti!” “Cerini, un sol’ cerini!” and the great hum of the electric tram, rushing up and down the hill like remorseless fate. “We’ll get the two Maxwells.”
Teresa rose up and stood before the fire, so that its glow fell on her white dress. Mrs Brodrick moved uneasily in her chair, for she saw that although Wilbraham was sitting on a sofa beside Sylvia, he was watching Teresa.
“I don’t know if Mary can come, but I am sure she would like it.”