“I think they are calling for you,” said Diana. “Thank you, little Countess, for coming to me on this great day. All the servants shall be taught to say My Lady when you come to see me at home. Good-bye now: and I hope you will be very happy—and make your husband happy,” Diana added, with an involuntary change of her voice.
“Oh, of course we shall be happy! and it will not be long before I shall make Pandolfo bring me to England. Good-bye, good-bye, Diana. Oh, how I wish you were only as happy as I am! I wish there was another Pandolfo for you. Yes, I am coming, aunt; good-bye, good-bye. I shall take your love to him, shall I? Oh yes, I will let you send him your love; and very soon I shall make him bring me to England: and I shall write to you in a few days, and—good-bye, dear Diana, good-bye.”
Diana went out upon her balcony to see them go away. The flowers and plants had grown high, and she stood unseen under the shade of the loggia. She felt that some one stood beside her as she looked down and watched the grave Italian leading out his gay little bride. What a butterfly Sophy looked, as she fluttered into the carriage which was to convey them to the villa! “Poor little Sophy, too,” said Diana, involuntarily, with a sigh.
“Are you sorry for her?” said the curate, who had come in unbidden at the door which Sophy had left open. He had not presumed, poor fellow, but he had come and gone with greater confidence, and taken a humble but secure place, half friend, half devoted follower, the last of Diana’s court, since the evening when he made that appeal to her. The rector thought his dear Bill was making way, and that perhaps, after all, the heart might be caught in the rebound. “Are you sorry for her?” he said with surprise; “she is not sorry for herself.”
“Yes, poor little Sophy,” said Diana, “she deserved some pretty young man like herself, who would have run about with her, and understood all her little vanities. I hope she will never be sorry for herself: but it will not be a very cheerful life.”
“I think of him,” the curate said, in a low voice.
Diana did not answer for a time. Something came into her throat and stopped her. Then she went on after a pause, “Sophy will be more of a woman than you think. She would have made you a good little wife, Mr. Snodgrass.”
“Me!” He made a step away from her in the shock of surprise and indignation. He was not vain, he thought; but he who cherished so lofty, so noble a love—he to have Sophy suggested to him, or such as she! This, from Diana, went to poor Snodgrass’s heart.
“Yes,” she said, looking at him with a smile in her clear eyes. “You are angry, but it is true. A girl like Sophy, young and fresh and sweet, who would think there was no one in the world like you, and would be good to your poor people, would make you more happy than anything else—though perhaps you do not think so now.”
Poor curate! this sudden dash of cold water upon him, in the very midst of the subdued exhilaration with which he found himself by Diana’s side, talking to her more freely than he had ever ventured to talk before, was very hard to bear. He thought, if it was possible for Diana to be cruel, that she was cruel now. That she could smile even, and jest—for it must be intended for a jest—at such a moment, when he, for his part, had come ready, as it were, to follow with her the funeral of poor Pandolfini! Was it not, if one might dare to permit such a thought, heartless of Diana? But she gave him no time to think. She had her packing to attend to, and all the last arrangements to make for leaving Pisa next day. Diana had resisted various proposals to “join a party” of tourists going northward. She was starting straight for home, from which she declared she had been only too long away. The Snodgrasses and Mrs. Norton were to dine with her in the evening—to drink the health of the newly married, and conclude this little episode of their life—and she had no more leisure now. She came in lightly from among the oleanders and aloes, in the soft grey dress which she had put on in such haste, as her excuse for not showing herself. It was too simple a garment—too like her governess days to suit Diana—and she had some reason of her own, perhaps, for putting it on; not any reason, one would think, however, for sad thoughts. She came in with a light in her eyes which had been somewhat veiled of late. “Now I must be busy,” she said, smiling upon her visitor as she dismissed him. The last week or two of warm Italian weather, and of these distracting melancholy contemplations, had stopped many things, or retarded them. Life itself had grown languid in sympathy: but now that was all over; the deed was done for which heaven and earth had seemed to be waiting, and there could be no more lingering, musing, over it now.