His eyes rested on her tenderly, and at the passion of his glance her own fell.
"If you like—yes," she murmured. And just then the Princesse
D'Agramont approached.
"May I drive you home, Mr. Leigh?" she asked.
"Thank you!" And Aubrey smiled as he accepted the invitation.
And presently the carriages started, Sylvie's light victoria leading, and the Princesse D'Agramont's landeau following. Half way back to Rome a picturesque little beggar, whose motley-coloured rags scarcely clothed his smooth brown limbs, suddenly sprang out of a corner where he had been in hiding with a great basket of violets, and threw the whole fragrant heap dexterously into Sylvie's carriage, crying out,
"Bellissima Signora! Bellissima! Bellissima! Un soldo! Un soldo!"
Laughingly Sylvie threw out four or five francs, but Aubrey, carried beyond all prudence by catching a glimpse of Sylvie's pretty head gleaming above the great purple cluster of violets she had caught and held, tossed a twenty-franc piece to the clever little rascal who had by "suiting the action to the word, and the word to the action" as Italians so often do, gained a week's earnings in one successful morning.
And the evening came, misty but mild, with the moon peering doubtfully through a fleecy veil of fine floating vapour, which, gathering flashes of luminance from the silver orb, turned to the witch-lights of an opal,—and Aubrey made his way to the Casa D'Angeli, which in his own mind he called the "Palais D'lffry," in memory of the old Breton song Sylvie had sung. On giving his name he was at once shown up into the great salon, now made beautiful by the picturesque and precious things accumulated there, and arranged with the individuality and taste of the presiding spirit. She was quite alone, seated in a deep easy chair near the fire,—and her dress, of some faint shell-pink hue, clung about her in trailing soft folds which fell in a glistening heap of crushed rose-tints at her feet, making a soft rest for her tiny dog who was luxuriously curled therein. The firelight shed a warm glow around her,—flickering brightly on her fair hair, on her white arms, and small hands where one or two diamonds flashed like drops of dew,—and Aubrey, as he entered, was conscious of an overpowering sense of weakness, poverty of soul, narrowness of mind, incompetency of attainment,—for the tranquillity and sweet perfection of the picture his eyes rested upon—a picture lovelier than even the Gretchen which tempted Goethe's Faust to Hell,—made him doubtful of his own powers—mistrustful of his own worth. In his life of self-renunciation among the poorer classes, he had grown accustomed to pity women,—to look upon them more or less as frail, broken creatures needing help and support,—sometimes to be loved, but far more often to be despised and neglected. But Sylvie, Comtesse Hermenstein, was not of these,—he knew, or thought he knew that she needed nothing. Beauty was hers, wealth was hers, independence of position was hers; and if she had given a smile or nod of encouragement, lovers were hers to command. What was he that he should count himself at all valuable in her sight, even as the merest friend? These despondent thoughts were doubly embittered by the immense scorn he now entertained for himself that he should have been such a fool as to listen for a moment to the silly and malignant gossip circulated among the envious concerning a woman who was admittedly the superior of those who calumniated her. For clearest logic shows that wherever superiority exists, inferiority rises up in opposition, and the lower endeavours to drag the higher down. Such vague reflections, coursing rapidly through his, brain, gave him an air of embarrassment and awkwardness not by any means common to him, as he advanced, and Sylvie, half rising from her chair, greeted him in her turn with a little touch of shyness which sent a wave of soft colour over her face, and made her look ten times prettier than ever.
"I am glad to find you alone—" he began.
"Yes? I am generally alone," answered Sylvie with a little smile—"except for Katrine—she would be here to welcome you this evening, but she has a very bad neuralgic headache—"