“Now, Madame Vivanti,” said Vansittart, when the inspection had been made, addressing Lisa with some ceremony, “if you and your aunt are pleased with these rooms, and if you would like to make your permanent home in London, turning your musical gifts to as much account as you can, I shall be happy to furnish them for you, and to pay the rent always, or at any rate as long as you remain unmarried—and”—in a graver tone, “lead a virtuous and reputable life, making no hasty acquaintances, and keeping yourself to yourself until you know this country well enough to make a wise choice of friends. Would you like me to do this?”
“How can you ask such a question? Ah, you are too good and generous to me. I shall be as happy as a queen—to live in rooms like these, with that lovely view over the river. It will be like living in a palace. But pray don’t call me Madame Vivanti. I feel as if you were angry with me.”
“Foolish child! you know better than that,” he said, smiling at her. “I am full of friendliest feelings towards you and your aunt. But I must not call you by your Christian name. Men and women do not do that in England, unless they are blood relations or affianced lovers. You must be Madame Vivanti in future.”
Lisa pouted and looked distressed, but said nothing. La Zia expressed her heartfelt gratitude, for her niece chiefly, for herself in a lesser degree. The kitchen seemed to impress her most of all. There was a hot plate, on which she could cook a risotto or a stufato, or a dish of macaroni, and all those messes which are savoury to the Italian palate.
“You will keep house for your niece, and take care of her boy”—Vansittart approached this subject with a certain hesitation totally unshared by the boy’s mother—“until he is old enough to go to school. Lisa—Madame Vivanti—will have to work hard at her musical education if she means to rise from the ranks of the chorus. I will look about for a respectable singing-master, who is not too famous to teach on moderate terms, and I will pay him for a course of lessons—to last, say, six months. By that time we shall know what Madame’s voice is made of.”
“Call me Si’ora, if you won’t call me Lisa,” said the young woman, impetuously. “I won’t be called by that formal Frenchified Madame.”
“It shall be Si’ora, then, if that will content you. And now, Si’ora, and la Zia, tell me that you are satisfied with me, and that what I am glad to do for you will be in some sense an atonement for—what I did that night.”
Lisa burst into a flood of tears.
“You are too generous; you do too much,” she cried. “He would never have done so much, not even if he had been rich. He thought anything good enough for us—after, after he began to get tired of us. You are a hundred times better than he was——”
“Lisa, Lisa,” remonstrated the elder woman, “that is a hard thing to say.”