“Oh, indeed! How I envy you! Think of coming to Italy for the first time!”
There was something of voracity in the eagerness with which I turned upon her. This was really too good to be true. It was incomparable. When had anybody ever come to Italy before without knowing exactly what was expected of them? To my astonishment, however, and no small dismay, the eyes of Henrietta suddenly began to swim.
“You wouldn’t envy me,” she said with a catch in her voice, “if you knew how disappointed I was, and what I’ve been through.”
She turned away a moment, as if to look at the great swinging lamp in the form of a branching cross; but I knew she was brushing her hand across her eyes. An unaccountable contrition swept over me. I responded, as sympathetically as I knew how:
“I beg your pardon, Miss Stackpole! I’m so sorry. I am sure you must have been unfortunate.”
“I have been!” she exclaimed, turning to me again. “I——” She stopped short a moment. Then—“You probably think I’m queer, telling you all these things; but you’re the first American I’ve seen for ’most a week.”
“The pleasure is mine, I assure you!” I declared. “It is even longer since I have seen one.” I failed to add what she might have found complimentary, that seeing Americans was not what I came to Venice for, and that I usually took pains to avoid them.
“Well,” she exclaimed, “it just does me good to talk to you.”
“Have you been here long?” I delicately suggested.
“Well, it seems as if it had been forever, but I guess it’s only about two days.” Miss Stackpole herself was evidently more mysterious than her little pad. In spite of my sympathy for an unfortunate lady I felt again an extreme curiosity to hear the story of an original one. Before I had quite made up my mind, however, as to how I might serve God and Mammon with equal zeal, Miss Stackpole’s overburdened heart solved the difficulty. “I’ve been in London all summer,” she volunteered, “reporting the coronation. But I got all het up, and so I broke off and went to Switzerland. I lost big money by it, too. I can afford it, though, and I got a lot better.”