“It looked like rain,” said la Zia, as she came in, “so Paolo and I made haste home.”
Lisa caught the boy up in her arms, and kissed him passionately. Never had she felt so glad to see him. Her active imagination had pictured herself separated for ever from her son, living in an atmosphere of pomp and powdered footmen, learning to forget her fatherless boy.
He had thriven on English fare, and the mild breezes of Battersea Park, and frequent airings upon the Citizen steamers. He was a great lump of a boy, with large black eyes, and long brown hair, and his mother’s Murillo colouring. The only traces of the other parentage were in the square Saxon brow and the firm aquiline of the nose. He was a magnificent outcome of a mixed race, and a fine example of what a boy of four years old ought to be. Lisa dropped into a chair with her burden, still hugging him, but borne down by his weight.
“Santo e santissimo!” exclaimed la Zia. “You will be late at the theatre. You must take a cab, quanto che costa.”
The Venetians had a horror of cabs, which were not alone costly, but fraught with the hazard of vituperation from fiery-faced cabmen. They delighted in the penny distances of road cars and other public conveyances. To exceed the limit of a penny ride was to la Zia’s mind culpable extravagance. A cab was only to be thought of in emergencies.
“Pardon, Signor,” she said, “the pleasure of your most desired company has made my niece forget her duties.”
She bustled into the adjoining room, and returned with Lisa’s black lace hat and little merino cape. There was no chorus girl at the Apollo who dressed as shabbily as the Venetian prima donna. La Zia bundled on the hat and tied on the cape, and dismissed her niece with a kiss.
“Zinco will bring you home, as always,” she said.
The ’cello lived in a shabby old street hard by, and was Lisa’s nightly escort from the Apollo to Chelsea. On fine nights they walked all the way, hugging the river, and praising the Embankment, which Zinco declared to be as much finer than the Lung ’Arno, as London was in his opinion superior to Florence.
Lisa and Sefton went downstairs together, both silent. He hailed a crawling hansom a few paces from the house-door, and put her into it, without a word. When she was seated he lifted his hat, and bade her good night; and it seemed to her that there was deadly hatred in the face which had looked at her a little while ago transfigured by passionate love.