'And you needn't be afraid; I'm sure he loves you, he can't help loving you. You dear little thing, he must be a stone indeed if he doesn't love you. Cecca says he does, and Cecca's really a wonderful woman at finding out all these things immediately by a kind of instinct. But if ever you dare to call me Miss Russell again from this very minute forward, why, really, Minna, I solemnly declare I shall be awfully angry with you.'
Minna smiled and promised cheerfully. In truth, at that moment her heart was full to overflowing. Her rivals—both of her real or imaginary rivals—were at last safely disposed of, and if only now she could be perfectly sure that Colin loved her! Gwen said so, and Cecca said so, but Colin didn't. If only Colin would once say to her in so many words, 'Minna, I love you. Will you marry me?' Oh, how happy she would be, if only he would say so!
CHAPTER XLI. AUDOUIN'S MISTAKE.
Lothrop Audouin walked round a little tremblingly to the Villa Panormi. He wasn't generally a shy or nervous man, but on this particular afternoon he felt an unwonted agitation in his breast, for he was bound to the Villa on a very special errand; and he was glad when he saw Gwen Howard-Russell walking about alone in the alleys of the garden, for it saved him the necessity of having to make a formal call upon her in the big salon. Gwen saw him coming, and moved towards the heavy iron gate to meet him.
She gave him her hand with one of her sunniest smiles, and Audouin took it, as he always did, with antique Massachusetts ceremoniousness. Then he turned with her, almost by accident as it were, down the path bordered by the orange-trees, and began to talk as he loved so well to talk, about the trees, and the flowers, and the green-grey lizards, that sat sunning themselves lazily upon the red Roman tiles which formed the stiff and formal garden edging.
'Though these are not my own flowers, you know, Miss Russell,' he said at last, looking at her a little curiously. 'These are not my own flowers; and indeed everything here in Rome, even nature itself, always seems to me so overlaid by the all-pervading influence of art that I fail to feel at home with the very lilies and violets in this artificial atmosphere In America, you know, my surroundings are so absolutely those of unmixed nature: I lead the life of a perfect hermit in an unsophisticated and undesecrated wilderness.'
'Mr. Winthrop has told me a great deal about Lakeside,' Gwen answered lightly, and Audouin took it as a good omen that she should have remembered the very name of his woodland cottage. 'You live quite among the primæval forest, don't you, by a big shallow bend in Lake Ontario?'
'Yes, quite among the primæval forest indeed; from my study window I look out upon nothing but the green pines, and the rocky ravine, and the great blue sheet of Ontario for an infinite background. Not a house or a sign of life to be seen anywhere, except the flying-squirrels darting about among the branches of the hickories.'