“I’ll start at once!” she exclaimed. “Is there anything you would like me to get you in the town?”
But Cristina shook her head.
Lily went quickly up to her room and put on her plain black coat and skirt. Then she took her cheque-book out of the only bag she ever kept locked, and caught up a pretty fancy basket, which had been a present from M. Popeau. He had bought it, full of fruit, at Marseilles, and she found it very useful when she did any little shopping either for herself or for Cristina.
As she opened the door of her room, she heard her name called out in Aunt Cosy’s voice: “Lily, Lily!” The voice was low and urgent, and seemed very near; probably Uncle Angelo was still asleep.
She looked up, a little startled. The bedroom opposite to hers, that which she knew to be Cristina’s bedroom—though as a matter of fact, she had never seen the old woman either enter it or leave it—had its door ajar, and through that door the Countess, clad in a dressing-gown, now emerged. She had a small, flat parcel in her hand.
“I fear,” she said nervously, “that you will think what I am going to ask you to do is very strange, my little one. It is to go to the Hôtel Hidalgo, and deliver this parcel into Beppo’s own hands. It is of great importance and value. I ought to have given it to him last night, but his coming was so unexpected that I forgot all about it.”
Lily was indeed more than surprised at this request, for by this time she had come to realise how very particular foreigners are as to what a girl may or may not do. And that she, Lily, should go to the Hotel Hidalgo, and ask for Beppo was just the sort of thing that all foreigners, Aunt Cosy included, would regard as a very improper thing to do. But she allowed nothing of what was passing in her mind to appear in her manner.
“It will be quite easy for me to go there on my way to cash a cheque!” she exclaimed, and held out her hand for the parcel.
The Countess’s face cleared. Then all at once a comical look of dismay came over it. “Why, that melancholy black coat and skirt?” she asked. “I would not like Beppo to see you looking—what is that expressive word?—dowdy! Put on one of your pretty frocks, my dear.”
But Lily, reddening, shook her head. Though she was, deep in her heart, sorry that she had not put on something a little more smart than this old dress, she did not feel inclined to change just because she was going to see Beppo!