“Also to your father and mother,” she said gravely. “I wonder if you know how much they care for you? They really live for you, and for nothing else, Beppo!”
To her surprise he looked disturbed and troubled. “I’m afraid that’s true,” he said ruefully. “And yet, Lily, seriously, I feel I really know very little about them! I know they love me, Lily—nay, that there is nothing that they would not do for me—and yet they seem to me almost like strangers.”
Lily was indeed astonished. “I don’t understand,” she exclaimed. “What exactly do you mean, Beppo?”
Somehow they seemed to have come much nearer to one another in the last two or three minutes, for Beppo Polda’s deep, vibrant voice had in it a note of sincerity which surprised the girl, and made her feel far more really kindly to him than she had done yet.
“They never tell me anything about their private affairs,” he went on slowly. “I need not tell you—for, of course, you must have seen it for yourself—that mamma’s is the master mind. She is a very clever woman. Sometimes”—his voice dropped—“I wonder if she is not too clever! I speak to you thus frankly because I feel that you are already one of the family.”
Lily felt touched by his words—though she thought it an odd thing to say, for, of course, she was not really related to them at all. She wondered, uncomfortably, if Beppo knew that she was his parents’ paying guest.
“Ought we not to be turning now?” she suggested. “I’m afraid Aunt Cosy will be getting anxious about me. She is very particular.”
“One can never be too particular about a young girl,” observed Beppo sententiously. “But still, it won’t hurt mamma to be anxious for another twenty minutes or so.”
They drove on, and Lily told herself that it was very pleasant to be motoring through this beautiful country, while listening to Beppo’s full, caressing voice. She found herself answering all kinds of questions about her own childhood and girlhood, and she could not help feeling flattered that Beppo was so obviously interested in all that concerned her. In that he was very unlike Captain Stuart. He seemed to take everything for granted. Beppo was even anxious to know of what illnesses her father and mother had died!
In some ways this fine, strong-looking young fellow seemed to the English girl more like a woman than a man. He was so interested in the sort of things which are supposed, perhaps erroneously, only to interest women. He spoke admiringly of her frock and her hat, and she gave him a lively account of her expedition to Mme. Jeanne.