Lisa took very kindly to the Professor, and showed no lack of industry. She was an obedient pupil, and worked very patiently at her piano, which was a much harder ordeal for the untrained fingers than the solfeggi were for the birdlike voice. All her hours unclaimed by the theatre were free for study, since la Zia bore the whole burden of household cares, the marketing and cooking, and the looking after the little boy.
One afternoon, shortly before Easter, Vansittart, calling after a week’s interval, was admitted by Lisa instead of by her aunt, who usually opened the door.
La Zia had gone into London in quest of certain Italian comestibles, only procurable in the foreign settlements of Soho, and Fiordelisa was alone with her boy. It was an opportunity that Vansittart had been hoping for, the chance of questioning her about the dead man, whose manes, though in some wise propitiated as he thought, had a trick of haunting him now and again.
“Lisa,” he began gently, forgetting that he had forbidden himself that familiar address, “there is something that I want to talk about—if—if I were sure it would not grieve you too much. I want you to tell me—more—about the man you loved—the man I killed. I know what sorrow his death brought upon you; but, tell me, was there no one else to grieve for him? Had he no kindred in England—father, mother, brothers, sisters?”
“I think not,” she answered gravely. “He never spoke of any one in England, never at least as if he cared for any one. His mother was dead. I know as much as that. For the rest, he told me hardly anything about himself; except that he had been away from England for a good many years, and that he was not fond of England or English people.”
“He was called John Smith. Do you think that was his real name?”
“I don’t know. I never heard of any other.”
“And in all the time you were associated with him did he write no letters to English friends, nor receive letters from England?”
“None that I ever saw.”
“And after his lamentable death were there no inquiries made about him? Did no one come to Venice in search of a missing friend or relative?”