“No, senor,” was the laconic reply.
“Then senora is a little melancholy,” rejoined Appadocca, after a moment or two.
No answer.
“Banish, senora, that pernicious feeling. Life is itself sufficiently insipid and sour, and does not require to be made more bitter by melancholy. Look out, see how nature softly smiles before you. The birds fly from branch to branch, and chirp, and are happy; the insects—listen to the hoarse cicada—seem enjoying their insect happiness; even the very grass, as the breeze turns its blades to the beams of the beautiful sun, reflect on our minds an idea of felicity. How can you be melancholy when you look out?”
Feliciana turned and bent her large eyes fully on Appadocca, looked at him intently for a few moments, and then turned away again.
Struck by the action, and not feeling himself as indifferent as he usually was, Appadocca said nothing.
A long interval ensued.
Feliciana kept her head in the same direction: at the side of her eyes two drops began to gather; they grew larger and larger, and in a few moments stood like two crystal beads ready to burst. Not a muscle, however, not a fibre of the beautiful weeper, seemed to sympathise, or quiver in unison with this silent grief. Like a statue of alabaster she remained rooted where she sat, and one could judge of the emotions which might affect her, only by the two transparent drops which balanced heavily at the corners of her eyes.
Appadocca saw this, and remained silent from respect to the sorrow of Feliciana. He thought of leaving the room, and giving the young lady freedom to indulge in that grief which seemed so deep and overpowering. Although prompted to do so by his sense of propriety, still he found himself detained by he knew not what, and seemed half to suspect that the sorrow had some sort of connexion with himself,—“Else,” he reasonably argued, “the young lady would have concealed her grief in the privacy of her own apartment.”
Appadocca, therefore, remained where he was, in deep silence, watching the tear drops that now again grew gradually smaller and smaller.