“You do not know him,” said Mrs. Thornton. “It is Paolo!”
Despard at once advanced and greeted him with the warmest cordiality.
“I was only a little fellow when I saw you last, and you have changed somewhat since then,” said Despard. “But when did you arrive? I knew that you were expected in England, but was not sure that you would come here.”
“What! Teresuola mia,” said Langhetti with a fond smile at his sister. “Were you really not sure, sorellina, that I would come to see you first of all? Infidel!” and he shook his head at her, playfully.
A long conversation followed, chiefly about Langhetti’s plans. He was going to engage a place in London for his opera, but wished first to secure a singer. Oh, if he only could find Bice—his Bicina, the divinest voice that mortal ever heard.
Despard and Mrs. Thornton exchanged glances, and at last Despard told him that there was a person of the same name at Brandon Hall. She was living in a seclusion so strict that it seemed confinement, and there was a mystery about her situation which he had tried without success to fathom.
Langhetti listened with a painful surprise that seemed like positive anguish.
“Then I must go myself. Oh, my Bicina—to what misery have you come—But do you say that you have been there?”
“Yes.”
“Did you go to the Hall?”