Her aunt lingered on the threshold of the door, the boy tugging at her skirts, and urging her to go out. Battersea Park was his favourite playground. He carried a wooden horse with a fine development of head, but with only a stick and a wheel to represent his body, which equine compromise he bestrode and galloped upon in the course of his airing. La Zia carried his pail and the shovel with which he was wont to scrape up the loose gravel in the roadway as blissfully as if he had been disporting himself beside the waves that roll gaily in to splash the children at play on the sands.
La Zia looked at her niece interrogatively, and the niece nodded “go,” whereupon aunt and boy vanished. She was always bidden to stop when Sefton was the visitor.
“You need not be frightened,” said Lisa. “We are not likely to meet again, as we met on the river. It was so long since I had seen you! I was taken by surprise, and forgot everything except that it was you, whom I thought I should never see again. I shall be wiser in future, now that I know more about you, and now that I have seen your wife.”
“That is my own good Lisa! She is a sweet wife, is she not? Worthy that a man should love her?”
“Yes, she is worthy; and she is fair and beautiful, like the Mary-lilies. I don’t wonder that you love her. And she has never done any evil thing in her life, has she? If a young man had said to her, ‘Come with me to Venice, and be my little wife,’ she would not have believed him, as I did. She would have said, ‘You must marry me first in the church.’ She would have believed in nothing but the church and the priest. She was not ignorant and poor, like me.”
“Lisa, do you suppose that I was making any unkind comparisons? I said only that she is worthy to be loved—that all men and women must love and honour her, and that her husband must needs adore her. And now, Si’ora, promise me that you will respect her jealousy, which is only the shadow cast by her love, and that you will do or say nothing that can make her unhappy.”
“I will do or say nothing to hurt you,” Lisa answered, somewhat sullenly. “She has little need to be unhappy, having all your love. But she is very sweet, as you say. She spoke to me graciously the other night, although she had a curious look, as if she were half afraid of me. Yes, she is beautiful. Did you know her and love her long before that day on the Lido, when you were so friendly with my aunt and me?”
“No, Si’ora.”
“What! your heart was free then?”
“Free as air.”