"What of all that which I said at dinner distresses you?" she asked gently, with sudden solicitude.
"You showed me that I have been a wretchedly negligent host."—In speaking, the young man turned his head and looked at her, paused a moment, almost startled by her resplendent aspect. Then he looked down at his own stunted and defective limbs. His expression became very grim. He raised his shoulders just perceptibly. "I reproach myself with having allowed you to be so much alone. It must have been awfully dull for you."
"It was a little dull," Helen said, still gently.
"I ought to have begged you to ask some of the people you know in Naples to come here. It was stupid of me not to think of it. I need not have seen them, neither need they have seen me."
He looked at her steadily again, as though trying to fix her image in his memory.
"Yes, it was stupid of me," he repeated absently. "But I have got into churlish, bachelor habits—that can hardly be helped, living alone, or on board ship, as I do—and I have pretty well forgotten how to provide adequately for the entertainment of a guest."
"Oh! I have had that which I wanted, that which I came for," Helen answered, very charmingly,—"had it in part, at all events. Though I could have put up with just a little more of it, Dickie, perhaps."
"I warned you, if you remember, that opportunities of amusement—as that word is generally understood—would be limited."
"Amusement?" she exclaimed, with an almost tragic inflection of contempt.
"Oh yes!" he said, "amusement is not to be despised. I'd give all I am worth, half my time, to be amused—but that again, like hospitality, is rather a lost art with me. You remember, I warned you life at the villa in these days was not precisely hilarious."