She looked from her husband to Captain Hulbert pleadingly. The latter was first to answer.
“I am at your service, Mrs. Disney; ready to be interrogated, or lectured, or advised, whichever you like.”
“I am not going to do either of the three. I am going to ask you a favour.”
“Consider that to ask is to be obeyed.”
They alighted in the road by the tomb a few minutes afterwards. Allegra’s note-book was out immediately, a true artist’s book, crammed with every conceivable form of artistic reminiscence.
“Go and talk,” she said, waving her hand to Isola and Hulbert; and then she clambered up a bank opposite that tower of other days to get a vantage ground for her sketch.
She had made a score of sketches on the same spot, but there were always new details to jot down, new effects and ideas, on that vast level which frames the grandeur of Rome. Yonder the long line of the aqueduct; here the living beauty of broad-fronted oxen moving with stately paces along the dusty way, the incarnation of strength and majesty, patience and labour.
“Stay here and smoke your cigar, Martin,” said Isola, “while Captain Hulbert and I go for a stroll.”
Her husband smiled at her tenderly, cheered by her unwonted cheerfulness. His days and hours alternated between hope and despair. This was a moment of hope.