‘Manners!’ Marcia sniffed indignantly. ‘I loathe the Italians! I think they are the cruellest people I ever saw. Those boys were stoning this poor dog to death.’
‘I dare say they have not enjoyed your advantages.’
‘They would have killed him if I hadn’t come just when I did.’
‘You are not going out to the villa alone?’
‘No; Aunt Katherine and Gerald are going to meet me at the station.’
‘Oh, very well,’ he answered in a tone of evident relief, as they turned toward the waiting carriage. ‘Let me take the dog and I will drop him a few streets farther on, where the boys won’t find him again.’
‘Certainly not,’ said Marcia indignantly. ‘Some other boys would find him. I shall take him home and feed him. He doesn’t look as if he had had anything to eat for weeks.’
‘In that case,’ said Sybert resignedly, ‘I will drive to the station with you, for he is scarcely a lap-dog and you may have trouble getting him into the train.’ And while she was in the midst of her remonstrance he stepped into the carriage and put the dog on the floor between his feet. The dog, however, did not favour the change, and stretching up an appealing paw he touched Marcia’s knee, with a whine.
‘You poor thing! Stop trembling. Nobody’s going to hurt you,’ and she bent over and kissed him on the nose.
Marcia was excited. She had not quite recovered her equanimity since the scene with Paul Dessart in the cloisters, and the affair of the dog had upset her afresh. She rattled on now, with a gaiety quite at variance with her usual attitude toward Sybert, of anything and everything that came into her mind—Gerald’s broken tooth, the departure of Marietta, the afternoon at Tre Fontane, and the episode of the dog. Sybert listened politely, but his thoughts were not upon her words.