First came a rattling of the handle, and then the door was burst open, and Paolo rushed in—a sturdy block of a boy, with flaxen hair and great black eyes—a curious compromise between the Saxon father and the Venetian mother; square-shouldered, sturdy, stolid, yet with flashes of southern impetuousness. He was big for his age, very big, standing straight and strong upon the legs of an infant Hercules. He excelled in everything but speech.
Vansittart lifted him in his arms, and looked long and earnestly into the cherubic countenance, which first smiled and then frowned at him. He was trying, in this living picture of the dead, to see whether he could discover any trace of the Marchant lineaments.
It might be that a foregone conclusion prompted the fancy—that the fear of seeing made him see—but in the turn of the eyebrow and the contour of cheek and chin he thought he recognized lines which were familiar to him in the faces of Eve and her sisters—lines which were not in Fiordelisa’s face.
He set the boy down with a sigh.
“Don’t spoil him, Signora,” he said to la Zia. “He looks like a boy with a good disposition, but a strong temper. He will want judicious training by-and-by.”
Lisa followed him to the vestibule, and opened the door for him.
“Tell me that you are not angry before you go,” she said imploringly.
“Angry? No, no; how could I be angry? I am only sorry that you should waste so much warmth of feeling on a man whose heart belongs to some one else.”
“What is she like—that some one else? Tell me that—I want to know.”
“Very lovely, very good, very gentle and tender and dear. How can I describe her? She is the only woman in the world for me.”