“I mean you think we are only capable of wearing pretty clothes and listening to pretty speeches, and that anything else is beyond our grasp altogether.”
“Nothing in the world, mademoiselle, is beyond your grasp, except”—he paused, and looked round him—“except a spade, perhaps, and that is what this garden wants.”
They were very grave about it, and sat down on a rough seat built by Mattei Perucca, who had come there in the hot weather.
“Then what is to be done?” said Denise, simply.
For the French—the most intellectually subtle people of the world—have a certain odd simplicity which seems to have survived all the changes and chances of monarchy, republic, and empire.
“I do not quite know. Have you not a man?”
“I have nobody, except a decrepit old man, who is half an imbecile,” said Denise, with a short laugh. “I get my provisions surreptitiously by the hand of Madame Andrei. No one else comes near the Casa. We are in a state of siege. I dare not go into Olmeta; but I am holding on because you advised me not to sell.”
“I, mademoiselle?”
“Yes; in Paris. Have you forgotten?”
“No,” answered Lory, slowly—“no; I have not forgotten. But no one takes my advice—indeed, no one asks it—except about a horse. They think I know about a horse.” And Lory smiled to himself at the thought of his proud position.