The rooms were furnished in less than a week, for the furniture was of the simplest, and all ready to his hand at a West End upholsterer’s. He had but to make his selection from a variety of styles, all graceful, artistic, and inexpensive. At the end of the week he sent the livery brougham to carry aunt and niece and boy to their new home. He sent Fiordelisa a little note by the coachman.
“Your house is ready. I shall call at four o’clock to-morrow afternoon to take a cup of tea in your drawing-room, and to hear if you approve of my furnishing.”
He received one of Lisa’s ill-written letters by the next morning’s post:—
“The rooms are lovely; everything is as pretty as a picture or a dream; but why did you not come this afternoon to let us thank you? To-morrow is so far off.”
This little letter induced punctuality. He was at Lisa’s door on the stroke of the hour. The afternoon light was shining in at the south windows. The sun shone golden over the western river. There were daffodils in a glass vase on the little white-wood table in the oriel, and the new cups and saucers that he had chosen were set out upon a bamboo table with many shelves. Aunt and niece were neatly dressed in their black merino gowns, and the little boy was playing with a set of bricks in a corner of the room, silently happy. Aunt and niece poured out their gratitude in a gush of Italian and English, curiously intermixed. Never was anything so pretty as this house of theirs; never so noble a benefactor as Vansittart. He could but feel happy in seeing their happiness. He had never been so near forgetting that scene of blood in the Venetian caffè.
He stayed for an hour or so, sipped half a cup of straw-coloured tea which Lisa fondly believed was made in the English manner, and then departed, promising to call again when he had found a singing-master.
“I shall be very particular in my choice, Signora,” he said gaily. “First and foremost, the Maestro must be old and ugly, lest you should fall in love with him; next, he must be a genius, for he is to teach you in a year what most people take three years to learn; and he must be a neglected genius, because we want to get him cheap.”
“I wish the good little man who taught me the mandoline were in London,” said Lisa.
Vansittart could not echo that wish, since the good little man must needs know the story of that midnight in the caffè, and he wanted no such Venetian in London.
“We shall find some one better than your professor,” he answered; “and that reminds me I have never heard you play on your mandoline.”