Beyond These Voices

by M. E. Braddon

"Don't you go and get a chill and make her ladyship angry with you. She won't like Dr. Wilmot's coming every day, or twice a day if he can find an excuse for it—as he did when I had my influenzer. But, of course, he knew I could afford to pay him. Well, O revore, dear," and the portly form that had been blocking out the western glow over the promontory of Bordighera slowly removed itself.

Vera was not destined to be alone that afternoon. She had not read three pages when a tall figure came between her and the light, and she rose hastily to acknowledge Signor Provana's greeting.

"It is too near sunset for you to be sitting there," he said. "Will you walk a little way with me—until five o'clock?"

Vera shut her book, and they walked on slowly and in silence to the gate of the cemetery, and still in silence till they stood by the white tomb.

There were flowers lying upon the slab, choice flowers, in their first freshness; and Vera thought that Provana had laid them there that afternoon.

They stood beside the tomb for some minutes, till the chapel clock struck the quarter before five, and no word was spoken till they were going back to the gate. Then Provana began to talk of his daughter, opening his heart to the girl she had loved.

He talked of her childhood, of her education, the bright, eager mind that made learning a delight, the keen interest in all that was most worthy to be admired, the innate appreciation of all that was best in literature and art, her love of music, and of the beautiful in all things. He was sure of Vera's sympathy, and that certainty made it easy to talk of his girl, whose name had rarely passed his lips in the long half-year of mourning.

"I have never talked of her since Miss Thompson left me," he said; "there was no one who would understand or care. There were friends who were kind and would have pitied me; but I could not endure their pity. It was easier to stand alone, and keep an iron wall between my heart and the world. But you were her companion in those last weeks; you are of her own age; you seem a part of herself, as if you were really her sister, left behind to mourn her, almost as I do."

After this confidence he made no more apologies for the sad note in all his conversation, as he and Vera loitered in the place of graves, or walked in the lemon orchards and olive woods on the hill-side above the cemetery. It became a settled thing for them to walk together every afternoon in the half-hour before Lady Felicia's tea-time; and as the week that Provana had talked of drew near its close, their rambles took a wider range, always with Grannie's approval, and they visited the white towns on the hills where they had been with Giulia and her governess in the golden spring-time. It was rapture to Vera to tread the narrow mule-paths, winding through wood and orchard, to walk with light, quick feet through scenes where everything was beautiful and romantic; to visit wayside shrines, and humble chapels hidden in the silver grey of the century-old trees, or to talk to the country women tramping homeward, carrying their baskets of the ripe black fruit. Provana helped her in her talk with the women, and contrived that they should understand her shy little discourse, the broken words and stumbling sentences.

Lady Felicia, usually so severe a stickler for etiquette, was curiously lax at San Marco, and could see nothing strange or unseemly in these unchaperoned rambles with the Roman financier, who, as she observed to Dr. Wilmot, was so obviously correct in all his ideas, to say nothing of his being almost old enough to be Vera's grandfather.