He too bent forward, with a smile not quite free from embarrassment—
'Yes, I have read it—I shall have some criticisms to make.—You won't mind?'
She threw up her hands—
'Must you?'
'I think I must—for the good of the book,'—he said reluctantly. 'Very likely I'm all wrong. I can only look at it as one of the public. But that's what he wants,'—what you both want—isn't it?'
She assented. Then she turned her head away, looked out of the carriage and said no more. But her face had drooped and dimmed, all in a moment; the lines graven in it long years before, by grief and delicacy, came out with a singular and sudden plainness.
The man sitting opposite to her was of an aspect little less distinguished than hers. He had a long face, with a high forehead, set in grizzled hair, and a mouth and chin of peculiar refinement. The shortness of the chin gave a first impression of weakness, which however was soon undone by the very subtle and decided lines in which, so to speak, the mouth, and indeed the face as a whole, were drawn. All that Lucy knew of him was that he was a Cambridge don, a man versed in classical archæology who was an old friend and tutor of Mr. Manisty's. She had heard his name mentioned several times at the Villa, and always with an emphasis that marked it out from other names. And she understood from various signs that before finally passing his proofs for publication, Mr. Manisty had taken advantage of his old friend's coming to Rome to ask his opinion on them.
How brilliant was the April day on the high terrace of the Aventine trattoria! As Lucy and Aunt Pattie stood together beside the little parapet looking out through the sprays of banksia rose that were already making a white canopy above the restaurant tables, they had before them the steep sides and Imperial ruins of the Palatine; the wonderful group of churches on the Coelian; the low villa-covered ridges to the right melting into the Campagna; and far away, the blue, Sabine mountains—'suffused with sunny air'—that look down with equal kindness on the refuge of Horace, and the oratory of St. Benedict. What sharpness of wall and tree against the pearly sky—what radiance of blossom in the neighbouring gardens—what ruin everywhere, yet what indomitable life!
Beneath on a lower terrace, Manisty and Mr. Vanbrugh Neal were walking up and down.
'He's such a clever man,' sighed Aunt Pattie, as she looked down upon them.
'But I do hope he won't discourage Edward.'