Carmela, nothing loth, drew a chair to the bedside. “You need not get up yet,” she said comfortably. “We always lie down after dinner until five, and later we go for a walk. You will see the Via Cavour full of people in the evening, officers and students, and mothers with daughters to be married, all walking up and down and looking at each other. Orazio Lucis first saw Gemma like that, and he followed us home, and then found out who we were and asked questions about us. Every day we saw him in the Piazza, smoking cigarettes, and waiting for us to go out that he might follow us, and Gemma would give him one look, and then cast down her eyes ... so!” Carmela caricatured her sister’s affectation of unconsciousness very successfully, and looked to Olive and Carolina for applause.
The servant grinned appreciation. “Yes, the signorina is very civetta. I, also, have seen her simpering when the avvocato has been here, but she soon gets tired of him, and then her face is as God made it.”
Olive dressed herself leisurely when they had left her, and unpacked her clothes and her little store of books. Her cousins, coming to fetch her soon after six o’clock, found her ready to go out, but so absorbed in a guide-book of Siena that she did not hear Maria’s knock at the door.
She had resolved that she would apply art and archæology as plasters to the wound life had given her already. She would stay her heart’s hunger with moods and tenses, but not of the verb “amare.” Learning and teaching, she might make her mind lord of her emotions.
She came forward rather shyly to meet her cousins. The three together were somewhat overpowering, flounced and frilled alike, and highly scented. Maria and Carmela fat, pleasant and profuse; Gemma silent, with dark resentful eyes and scornful lips that never smiled at other women.
“You will show me the best things?” Olive said eagerly when they had all kissed her. “I want to see the Duomo first, and then the Palazzo Vecchio—but that is only open in the mornings, is it? And this is the Piazza Tolomei, so the house where Pia lived must be quite near.”
Gemma stared, but made no attempt to answer, and Maria looked confused.
“I am afraid you will find us all very stupid, cara,” said Carmela, apologetically. “We only go to the Duomo to pray, and as to museums and picture-galleries— And perhaps I had better tell you now, at once, that we do not want to learn English. We have got you several lessons through friends, but Maria and Carmela say they will not fatigue themselves over a foreign language, and I—”
“Oh,” began Olive, “I thought—”
Gemma interrupted her. “A thousand thanks,” she said rudely. “We are not school children; we read about Pia dei Tolomei years ago at the Scuola Normale, but we do not consider her an amusing subject of conversation now.”