“Then you have a number of brothers and sisters, Lisa,” said Vansittart. “Can you reconcile your mind to living in England and seeing them no more?”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders.
“There are too many of us,” she said; “each of us felt what it was to be one mouth too many. The mother died six years ago, worn out like an old shoe that has tramped over the stones through all weathers. My father would beat us for a word or a look. It was a hard life at Burano. I don’t want to go back there—ever. And your name, Signor; you have not told us that.”
“My name! Ah, true!”
He hesitated for an instant or so. Could he trust them with the knowledge of his name and surroundings? He thought not. They were women, impulsive, uneducated, therefore uninstructed in the higher law of honour.
“My name is Smith,” he said.
“How strange! The same as his,” exclaimed Lisa.
“It is a common English name.”
The carriage stopped at a street corner, and Vansittart led the way up the brand-new staircase to the brand-new third story. Lisa and her aunt were in raptures. Everything was so pretty, the paint, the paper, the ceilings, the windows and balconies, the fireplaces, with their tasteful wooden mantelpieces, and shining flowery tiles, and artistic little grates, warranted to consume a minimum of coals and give a maximum of heat.
There was a somewhat spacious sitting-room, with five windows, including the oriel in the western corner. Opening out of this were two small bedrooms; and on the other side of the landing there was the doll’s-house kitchen, furnished with many shelves and conveniences for cooking and washing up, a kitchen as ingenious in its arrangements, and almost as small as the steward’s cabin on a Jersey steamer.