“I suppose Nona intends returning to France to nurse once again and you do not wish her to make the trip so soon?” Barbara Thornton remarked, as if she had been following but one train of thought, rather than making a careful and critical study of her guests at the same time.
Sonya Valesky was sitting in a tall carved chair drinking her tea from a clear glass in Russian fashion. She was always perfectly dressed, for she had the art of making whatever costume she wore appear the ideal one. But today she seemed even more so than usual. With her partly gray hair, her deep blue eyes with their dark brows and lashes, and the foreign look she never lost, she was an oddly arresting figure.
She smiled now at her hostess and then shook her head.
“Of course that is true, Barbara, and I am not much surprised at your guessing. But since this is what Nona herself wishes to talk to you about, we had best not discuss it, or she may feel I have tried to influence you. Of course I understand her great desire to help nurse her own countrymen, for Nona has so long hoped the United States would join the Allies. But I don’t think Nona has rested sufficiently long since our return from Italy. You may see a change in her, Barbara, and I can’t be cross with her just now. I have not yet found a school for Bianca and I cannot leave her alone in a strange county. When fall comes it will be different, as her mother especially wished her to enter an American school.”
This speech was made in a perfectly simple and matter-of-fact fashion with no suggestion of mystery or misfortune. Nevertheless, Barbara Thornton observed a slight change in the expression of the youngest of her three guests. One could scarcely assert that the young Italian girl flushed, or that she made any very perceptible movement. It was merely that her delicate eyelids drooped over her wide blue eyes and that her lips parted with the quick in-taking of her breath. She seemed not so much to mind what had been said as to fear a further discussion of the subject. This is ordinarily true of most of us when there is in our lives any fact which we hope to keep secret.
Barbara Thornton was aware that Bianca’s mother was an Italian peasant who was now a fugitive, having sold Italian secrets to a German agent in Florence. Since her disappearance no one knew whether Nannina was alive or dead, so it was small wonder that Bianca should appear unhappy at the mention of her mother’s name. However, she answered gently and submissively:
“I am sorry to have the Signora Valesky allow me to interfere with her plans. Beyond anything I too would like to be allowed to do something for the wounded solders. I cannot nurse, but I am stronger than I look and there are so many things to be done,——”
But no one answered or paid any attention to Bianca, for at this instant Nona Davis came into the room. Forgetting all her other visitors Barbara at once jumped up and ran forward to greet her.
This summer afternoon Nona had on a dark-blue silk dress which accentuated her slenderness and fairness. In truth, she did look too worn out to be planning to start off, almost immediately, to continue her Red Cross nursing. With only one real holiday, Nona Davis had been nursing almost continuously since the outbreak of the war. As a matter of fact she had the strength which so often seems a characteristic of delicate, ethereal persons.
After embracing Barbara and nodding to her other friends she dropped into a big leather chair, in which she appeared lost, except that it accentuated the shining quality of her pale, yellow hair and the blueness of her eyes, which looked darker, because of the rather strained, whiteness of her face.