Generally they passed their mornings in the loggia reading and working. Lucy was a dexterous needle-woman, and a fine piece of embroidery had made much progress since their arrival at Torre Amiata. Secretly she wondered whether she was to finish it there. Eleanor now shrank from the least mention of change; and Lucy, having opened her generous arms to this burden, did not know when she would be allowed to put it down. She carried it, indeed, very tenderly—with a love that was half eager remorse. Still, before long Uncle Ben must remonstrate in earnest. And the Porters, whom she had treated so strangely? They were certainly going back to America in September, if not before. And must she not go with them?
And would the heat at Torre Amiata be bearable for the sensitive Northerner after July? Already they spent many hours of the day in their shuttered and closed rooms, and Eleanor was whiter than the convolvulus which covered the new-mown hayfields.
What a darling—what a kind and chivalrous darling was Uncle Ben! She had asked him to trust her, and he had done it nobly, though it was evident from his letters that he was anxious and disturbed. 'I cannot tell you everything,' she had written, 'or I should be betraying a confidence; but I am doing what I feel to be right—what I am sure you would consent to my doing if you knew. Mrs. Burgoyne is very frail—and she clings to me. I can't explain to you how or why—but so it is. For the present I must look after her. This place is beautiful; the heat not yet too great; and you shall hear every week. Only, please, tell other people that I wish you to forward letters, and cannot long be certain of my address.'
And he:
'Dear child, this is very mysterious. I don't like it. It would be absurd to pretend that I did. But I haven't trusted my Lucy for fourteen years in order to begin to persecute her now because she can't tell me a secret. Only I give you warning that if you don't write to me every week, my generosity, as you call it, will break down—and I shall be for sending out a search party right away…. Do you want money? I must say that I hope July will see the end of your adventure.'
Would it? Lucy found her mind full of anxious thoughts as Eleanor read aloud to her.
Presently she discovered that a skein of silk she wanted for her work was not in her basket. She turned to look also in her old inlaid workbox, which stood on a small table beside her. But it was not there.
'Please wait a moment,' she said to her companion. 'I am afraid I must get my silk.'
She stood up hastily, and her movement upset the rickety cane table. With a crash her workbox fell to the ground, and its contents rolled all over the loggia. She gave a cry of dismay.
'Oh! my terra-cottas!—my poor terra-cottas!'