CHAPTER XXI
It was a wonderful drive. Beppo, who acted as chauffeur, was skilful and daring—the unkind would have called him reckless. He took the old, almost worn-out, motor-car where most drivers would have feared to venture, but Lily, physically, was very brave, and once or twice when the Marchese uttered a word of remonstrance she was surprised, and a little amused.
She was still absorbed in what had happened, and in going over and over again every word of her strange talk with the woman who now sat, absolutely silent, by Beppo Polda’s side.
Certain passages of the conversation remained far more vividly in Lily’s mind than others. Thus, while she hardly gave a thought to the question to which the Marchesa attached such tremendous importance—the question of how Aunt Cosy procured the money which she now and again sent or gave to her son—the English girl kept thinking of what the other woman had said about her, Lily Fairfield, and Beppo.
She felt a good deal disturbed, and at the same time thrilled and moved. Was Beppo really in love with her? Certainly his manner was very, very different when they two, by chance, found themselves alone, even for a few moments. He then either became at once ardent and deferential—or coaxing, affectionate, and delightfully confidential.
This last had been his attitude during the drive he had taken her the day before yesterday, and it was the mood in which she liked him best. When he gazed with burning eyes into her face, the while paying her outrageous compliments, she felt shy, and very ill at ease. At such moments he seemed to be trying an experiment—trying, that is, to rouse in her a feeling her whole being denied him the right to exact. And yet—and yet she did find him an exciting and stimulating companion, and she could not help being glad he was staying on in Monte Carlo....
All at once the motor began to slow down. They were going over the yellow, marshy piece of rough road where they had stopped during the first drive Lily had taken with Beppo and his friends.
The Marchese exclaimed in his careful English: “It is a spring under the earth. Never dry here!”
Once they were safely across the marshy place, Beppo began driving along what was little more than a path cut through a big olive grove, which brought them, far sooner than Lily expected, to the front door of La Solitude.
“There is no short cut around here that I do not know,” the young man said, as he helped her down; and almost at the same moment the Marchesa called out: “I cannot do myself the pleasure of coming in to see the Countess, for a friend is coming to tea. Will you return to dinner to-night, and then accompany us to the Club, Lily?”