The following day, Lucy in Benson's charge paid her duty to the Sophocles of the Lateran Museum, and, armed with certain books lent her by Manisty, went wandering among the art and inscriptions of Christian Rome. She came home, inexplicably tired, through a glorious Campagna, splashed with poppies, embroidered with marigold and vetch; she climbed the Alban slopes from the heat below, and rejoiced in the keener air of the hills, and the freshness of the ponente, as she drove from the station to the villa.
Mrs. Burgoyne was leaning over the balcony looking out for her. Lucy ran up to her, astonished at her own eagerness of foot, at the breath of home which seemed to issue from the great sun-beaten house.
Eleanor looked pale and tired, but she took the girl's hand kindly.
'Oh! you must keep all your gossip for dinner!' said Eleanor, as they greeted. 'It will help us through. It has been rather a hard day.'
Lucy's face showed her sympathy, and the question she did not like to put into words.
'Oh, it has been a wrestle all day,' said Eleanor wearily. 'She wants Mr. Manisty to do certain things with her property, that as her trustee he cannot do. She has the maddest ideas—she is mad. And when she is crossed, she is terrible.'
At dinner Lucy did her best to lighten the atmosphere, being indeed most truly sorry for her poor friends and their dilemma. But her pleasant girlish talk seemed to float above an abyss of trouble and discomfort, which threatened constantly to swallow it up.
Alice Manisty indeed responded. She threw off her silence, and talked of Rome, exclusively to Lucy and with Lucy, showing in her talk a great deal of knowledge and a great deal of fine taste, mingled with occasional violence and extravagance. Her eyes indeed were wilder than ever. They shone with a miserable intensity, that became a positive glare once or twice, when Manisty addressed her. Her whole aspect breathed a tragic determination, crossed with an anger she was hardly able to restrain. Lucy noticed that she never spoke to or answered her brother if she could help it.
After dinner Lucy found herself the object of various embarrassing overtures on the part of the new-comer. But on each occasion Manisty interposed at first adroitly, then roughly. On the last occasion Alice Manisty sprang to her feet, went to the side table where the candles were placed, disappeared and did not return. Manisty, his aunt, and Mrs. Burgoyne, drew together in a corner of the salon discussing the events of the day in low anxious voices. Lucy thought herself in the way, and went to bed.
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