But Julius neither saw that smile, nor afforded her the slightest opportunity of speaking to him; and—strange contradiction in human impulses!—the more he wrapped himself in his reserve, the more abject was her humility in endeavouring to draw him out of it.
At length she fled to her own room, resolved to bring down the Leopardi, and hand it to him, saying,—
"There is the book you ought to have had before dinner."
But when she reached her room, she was forced to vent her pent-up feelings in a flood of tears—and bitter-sweet those tears were: bitter in remembrance of the past, sweet in anticipation of the future. Having calmed herself by "a good cry," she had then to wash her face and eyes, to remove all traces of her grief. This took some little time.
When perfectly satisfied with her appearance, she took up the volume, kissed it fervently, and tripped down stairs. She found Violet alone leaning her magnificent arm upon the table in an attitude of profound meditation.
"Where... where are .... they?" Rose faltered out.
"The St. Johns? Gone this quarter of an hour."
"Gone!" exclaimed Rose in an agonized voice, and sank into a chair, with a terrible presentiment of some tragic results from her absurd caprice.