He sat up abruptly, brushing the hair out of his eyes; but as he moved she spoke.
'Won't you give me the book now, Dino?' She bent her head down over it: 'I did not mean to vex you; I did not mean to tease you when you are so tired.'
She looked so like a child submitting to some half-understood reproof that Dino could scarcely restrain the impulse of mingled tenderness and adoration which made him long to take her in his arms and kiss her. But he forced himself to answer lightly: 'What nonsense, little one; as if anything you did could vex me!' He looked about him: 'I suppose I ought to be going now. There is no telling when Sor Drea will be in if he has taken the nets; but I wish you would sing to me—just one song before I go.' He took the book away from her and closed it gently. 'After all, you are right; it is better to have music than to do one's lesson on such a morning. Sums are made for different weather, are they not, Italia mia? For days when the libeccio blows, and one does not mind wasting a whole morning over one terrible bit of multiplication.'
'Oh, but even I am not quite so bad as that,' said Italia quickly. 'I had only just brought out my book when you came; before then I had been talking to the signor Padrone.'
'What!' said Dino, in quite an altered voice. He noticed the change himself, but he could not prevent it; it was all he could do to ask the question quietly, 'Has—has the Marchese Gasparo been here?'
'Surely,' said Italia, looking at him with some surprise; 'he came here about an hour ago to speak about the boat to my father. He wants to take a party of his friends out for a sail.' She added: 'I thought you knew he had been here; he told me he had met you.'
'No, I did not know it,' said Dino, speaking between his teeth.
All the radiant sweetness of the day seemed blotted out before him. It was very well for that child there innocently to accept this fiction about the boat; but did not he, Dino, understand Gasparo better? A dozen stories of the handsome Captain's powers of fascination flashed back across him. He thought of the woman to whom he had carried the letter that very morning. The letter! It was a trick to get him out of the way; that was why Gasparo had turned that friendly smiling face upon him, and talked of 'old times,' of 'days when they were boys together,' and all the while he was planning this visit to Italia—damn him!
He forgot all about Italia's presence. With a sudden prophetic feeling he seemed looking straight ahead into the future. He could see exactly what would happen, such an old, old story; and to think that such misery could even come near Italia, his little playfellow, his little girl. If he had only known in time; if he had warned that strange lady when he spoke to her this morning, that would indeed have been fighting Gasparo with his own weapons! And then he remembered the tone of her voice when she spoke to him; to him, a man, not a girl, thrown upon her mercy. 'When the waves beat too fiercely against the shore the rock breaks them,' she said. And he was to go away, he had sworn it, and it was in such hands that he was to leave the future of Italia!
He had been silent so long that she thought him very tired. Perhaps he was depressed, too, about this sudden change in his fortunes. His mother might have been finding fault with him; Italia was always a little afraid of the Sora Catarina, who was associated in her mind with dark reproving looks and a generally grave and joyless view of life. It was always a matter of secret wonder to her when she heard her father allude to the days when Dino's mother had been a young and handsome girl. In her heart Italia could never imagine her looking otherwise than imperious and miserable. It seemed quite probable now that she should be the cause of Dino's look of unhappiness.