“There they are!” cried Gladys suddenly, as the figures of the Andersen brothers made themselves visible on the further side of the orchard.
The girls advanced to meet them through the thick grass, swinging their summer-hats in their hands and bending their heads, now and then, to avoid the overhanging boughs. The meeting between these four persons would have made a pleasant and appropriate subject for one of those richly-coloured old-fashioned prints which one sometimes observes in early Victorian parlours. Gladys grew quite pale with excitement, and her voice assumed a vibrant tenderness when she accosted Luke, which made Lacrima give a little start of surprise, as she shook hands with the elder brother. Had her persecutor then, got, after all, some living tissue in the place where the heart beat?
Luke’s manner had materially altered since he had submitted so urbanely to the fair girl’s insulting airs at the close of their first encounter. His way of treating her now was casual, flippant, abrupt—almost indifferent. Instead of following the pathetic pressure of her arm and hand, which at once bade him hasten the separation of the group, he deliberately lingered, chatting amicably with Lacrima and asking her questions about Italy. It seemed that the plausible Luke knew quite as much about Genoa and Florence and Venice as his more taciturn brother, and all he knew he was well able to turn into effective use. He was indeed a most engaging and irresistible conversationalist; and Gladys grew paler and paler, as she watched the animation of his face and listened to his pleasant and modulated voice.
It caused sheer suffering to her fiercely impetuous nature, this long-drawn out delay. Every moment that passed diminished the time they would have together. Her nerves ached for the touch of his arms about her, and a savage desire to press her mouth to his, and satiate herself with kisses, throbbed in her every vein. Why would he not stop this irrelevant stream of talk? What did she care about the narrow streets of Genoa,—or the encrusted façade of San Marco? It had been their custom to separate immediately on meeting, and for Luke to carry her off to a charming hiding-place they had discovered. With the fierce pantherish craving of a love-scorched animal her soul cried out to be clasped close to her friend in this secluded spot, having her will of those maddening youthful lips with their proud Grecian curve! Still he must go on talking!
James and Lacrima, lending themselves, naturally and easily, to the mood of the moment, were already seated at the foot of a twisted and ancestral apple-tree. Soon Luke, still absorbed in his conversation with the Italian, shook off Gladys’ arm and settled himself beside them, plucking a handful of grass, as he did so, and inhaling its fragrance with sybarite pleasure.
“St. Mark’s is the only church in the world for me,” Luke was saying. “I have pictures of it from every conceivable angle. It is quite a mania with me collecting such things. I have dozens of them; haven’t I, James?”
“Do you mean those post-cards father sent home when he went over there to work?” answered the elder brother, one of whose special peculiarities was a curious pleasure in emphasizing, in the presence of the “upper classes,” the humility of his origin.
Luke laughed. “Well—yes—those—and others,” he said. “You haven’t the least idea what I keep in my drawer of secret treasures; you know you haven’t! I’ve got some lovely letters there among other things. Letters that I wouldn’t let anyone see for the world!” He glanced smilingly at Gladys, who was pacing up and down in front of them, like a beautiful tigress.
“Look here, my friends,” she said. “The time is slipping away frightfully. We are not going to sit here all the while, are we, talking nonsense, like people at a garden party?”
“It’s so lovely here,” said Luke with a slow smile. “I really don’t think that your favourite corner is so much nicer. I am in no hurry to move. Are you, Miss Traffio?”