He had known from whispers and rustlings, from a sort of instinct, latterly from Giovanna’s own lips, that his house since the coming of “that lady” to undertake the government of his sickroom had been full of people, making practical and easy the carrying out of her plots. Abundance of people and abundance of money. Old Giovanna grumbled bitterly at this invasion, but she did it inside of herself, sanely recognizing that she had subject for gratitude. Her hot dark eye looked all she thought, and her lips moved as she soundlessly said all she felt; but when she dropped into the dark church of Santa Maria degli Angeli for a moment’s devotion she did not fail to ask Maria to bless “that lady” and give her great good. After which she begged Her by the seven swords of Her sorrow to hasten the day that should clear the house of the whole horde of strangers, and permit her to resume the quiet life with her signorino.
Gerald, whose nature felt the oppression of material benefits as much as Giovanna felt jealousy with regard to her rights and loves, resolved that the sole seemly return for generosity in this case would be an equal generosity, consisting in an acceptance pure of every shadow, either of obligation, or reserve, or regret.
Since the doctor said it would do the invalid no harm to admit a visitor or two, Aurora wrote to Mrs. Foss. She came at once with Leslie. Both on the occasion of this call were perfect, in tact, in warmth, in friendship. And yet 307with them, and the sense of the World and the World’s point of view which they inevitably brought, change entered the house.
The vacuous, almost happy languor of the sick was replaced in Gerald by an irritable gloominess, decently repressed, but unconcealable.
“There’s no mistake; you’re getting well,” remarked Aurora, when the unrest of a mind troubled by many things expressed itself in indignation against innocent inanimate objects, a drop of candle wax for burning, an ivory paper-cutter for snapping in his impatient hand. “You’re getting well. I guess I can go home and feel easy about you.”
And sooner than Giovanna had dared to hope when most fervently she invoked the Holy Mother, lo! the intruders, mistress and maids, bag and baggage, had left in their places room and silence. So much sooner than expected that Giovanna, clasping in her hands an incredible fee, almost found it in herself to feel regret.