He heard the prattle of the child as la Zia opened the door to him, and the mother’s voice telling him to be quiet. La Zia received him with open arms, and praised his kindness in coming to see them after such a long absence.
“If it had not been for the discovery that the rent was paid when we took our money to the agent on Our Lady’s Day, we should have thought you had forgotten us,” said la Zia.
She had her bonnet on, ready to take Paolo to Battersea Park, where she took him nearly every afternoon, while Lisa practised, or slept, or yawned over an English story-book. She would read nothing but English, in her determination to master that language; but history was too dull, novels were too long, and she cared only for short stories in which there was much sentimental love-making, generally by lords and ladies with high-sounding titles. These she read with rapture, picturing herself as the heroine, Vansittart as the high-born lover. She could not understand how so grand a gentleman could have missed a title. In Italy he would have been a Marquis or a Prince, she told herself.
She started up at the sound of his voice, and welcomed him joyously, pale but radiant.
“Why would you not come near me the other night?” she asked. “I was in your sister’s house—Mr. Sefton told me that the gracious lady is your sister—and you were there, and you hid yourself from me.”
“I was afraid, Si’ora,” he answered, coming to the point at once. “You know what lies between you and me—a secret the telling of which would blight my life—and you are so reckless, so impetuous. How could I tell what you might say?”
She looked at him with mournful reproachfulness.
“Do you know me so little as that?” she said. “Don’t you know that I would cut my tongue out—that I would die on the rack, as tortured prisoners died in Venice hundreds of years ago—rather than I would speak one word that could hurt you?”
“Forgive me, Si’ora. Yes, yes, I know that you would not willingly injure me—but you might ruin my life by a careless speech. You have aroused my wife’s suspicions already—suspicious of she knows not what—vague jealousies that have made her unhappy. She could not understand your impulsive greeting; and I could not tell her how much you were my friend, without telling her the why and the wherefore. I am hemmed round with difficulty when I am questioned about you. If you were old and ugly it would be different—but I dare not avow my interest in a young and beautiful woman without revealing the claim she has upon my friendship—and in that claim lies the secret of my crime. Do you understand, Lisa?”
“Yes, I understand,” she answered moodily.