“No, child. La Signora Hawberkini retired to rest an hour ago, when all the respectable people had gone. She did not wait to see the last of such night-birds as you and Sefton, and these disreputable journalists here.”
“I love the night,” said Lisa, in no wise abashed. “It is ever so much nicer than day.”
The servants had vanished, but she found her wrap lying on a sofa—an old red silk shawl, a Bellagio shawl, whose dinginess went ill with her velvet gown and diamond necklace; but she wrapped it about her head and shoulders, nothing caring, and she looked a real Italian peasant as she turned to Sefton in the light of the hall lamps. He admired her even more at this moment than he had admired her before—he liked to think of her as a peasant; with no womanly sensitiveness to suffer, no pride to be wounded; divided from him socially by a great gulf of difference; and so much the more surely, and so much the more lightly to be won.
They went out into the street together. It was moonlight, a February moon, cold, and sharp, and clear, with a hoar frost whitening the wintry shrubs and iron railings. Lisa caught up her velvet train, and tripped lightly along the pavement in bronze beaded slippers and bright red stockings, Sefton at her side. She would not take his arm, both hands being occupied, one clutching the silk shawl, the other holding up her skirt. The walk was of the shortest, for Saltero’s Mansion was only just round the corner; nor could Sefton detain her on the doorstep for any sentimentality about the moonlit river. She had her key in the door in a moment, and as he pushed the big, heavy door open for her, she vanished behind it with briefest “Grazie, e buona notte, caro Signor.”
There had not been time for the gentlest pressure of her strong, broad hand, or for his tender “Addio, bellissima mia,” to be heard.
But to know where she lived was something gained, and as he walked homeward humming “la donna è mobile,” he meant to follow up that advantage. He had told her that he was her near neighbour. He had gone even further, and had asked her if she would sing for him at a little tea-party, were he to give one in her honour; on which she had only laughed, and said that she had never heard of a man giving a tea-party.
The acquaintance begun so auspiciously gave Wilfred Sefton a new zest for London life. He hailed the hardening frosts of February with absolute pleasure, he for whom that month had hitherto been the cream of the hunting season. He cared nothing that his latest acquisitions, the hunters in whose perfections he still believed, whose vices he had not had time to discover, were eating their heads off in his Sussex stables. He was in his stall at the Apollo every night; and Lisa’s singing and Lisa’s beauty, and the “quips and cranks and wanton wiles” which constituted Lisa’s idea of acting, were enough for his contentment.
He waited till Wednesday before he ventured to call upon his divinity. He would gladly have presented himself at her door on Monday afternoon; but he did not want to appear too eager. Tuesday seemed a long blank day to his impatience, although there was plenty to do in London for a man of intellect and taste; pictures, people, politics, all manner of interests and amusements.
Lisa had told him about the aunt who lived with her and kept house for her. There could be no impropriety in his visit. He made up his mind indeed to ask for the elder lady in the first instance; but all uncertainty was saved him, as it was la Zia who opened the door. Those diamonds of Lisa’s could not have been earned so speedily had the Venetians taken upon themselves the maintenance of a servant. What was she there for, argued la Zia—when Hawberk suggested the necessity of a parlour-maid—except to sweep and dust, and market and cook? An English servant, who would want butcher’s meat every day, and would object to the cuisine à l’huile, would be a ruinous institution.
La Zia was not too tidy in her indoor apparel, since her love for finery was stronger than her sense of the fitness of things. She had one gown at a time, a gown of silk or plush or velveteen, which she wore as a best gown till it began to be shabby or dilapidated, when Lisa bought her another fine gown, and the old one was taken for daily use.