Paolo had continued to be Harry’s faithful friend; but their intercourse had been disturbed by the society at the Consulate, for, except on some special occasion, he was not important enough to be introduced to all the fine company that assembled there; only now and then when all the employés were asked, and a little semipublic fête for them banished the fine people, did Paolo enter these enchanted walls, and talk with the young mistress of the house. He had scarcely ever talked to Harry of the Signorina, but when he did mention her there had been a slightly cynical tone in his remarks. To tell the truth, Paolo had never got over that first appearance of the Vice-Consul’s daughter in the street at night. He had recognized her, clinging to her old attendant, hurrying away, while Harry, all unconscious of what was to come of it, had stopped the Italians who were pursuing her, and summarily knocked down the Englishman. Paolo was not ill-natured, nor given to ill-thinking, but he was an Italian, and he could not imagine any perfectly virtuous motive which could have taken a young lady out of her house at that hour. That love or intrigue had something to do with it he was convinced, and all the proof in the world could not have persuaded him otherwise. But he did not wish to throw any indiscreet light upon her proceedings, or to betray her to the world. With some sense of this, though without ever explaining to himself how it was that he had such a feeling, Harry had refrained from telling him the climax of the story. He had left the Consul’s sudden friendship unexplained, Paolo requiring no explanation of it, and feeling it the most simple and natural thing in the world. But during the whole interval there had been in Paolo’s tone a note of unexpressed warning against the Vice-Consul’s daughter; he had not said anything, but he had left something to be inferred. This Harry had sometimes resented, sometimes laughed at, but he had never taken the warning or been moved by the tone. He thought it was a prejudice such as one person sometimes feels quite unaccountably against another; or that perhaps it was some pique; perhaps that Paolo himself had admired too much the young princess who was so entirely out of his reach: but whatever was the cause, he was conscious enough that Paolo was not favourable to the lady of his thoughts. And he resolved accordingly to ask the advice of his friend on the grand question only. He would not give him any special information, or even indicate, however vaguely, who the lady was. That he should speak to Paolo at all on the subject showed that a change had come over Harry’s thoughts. It would be too much to say that he did not entertain still a somewhat contemptuous estimate of the little “foreigner” who had sworn eternal friendship at first sight, and had wept, and even kissed his friend, in his rapture at his good fortune. When Harry recalled that embrace he grew red still, with the undying indignation which moves a man when he has been made ridiculous. And he still treated Paolo de haut en bas, with a careless superiority. But by this time he had learned to know that Paolo was on some things a much better authority than himself, and that, though he might be trivial and absurd on questions which Englishmen consider themselves judges of, yet there were other matters, chiefly touching his own countrymen, which he knew better than any Englishman. To have attained to this conviction was in a way a moral advance for Harry, who formerly had looked down upon “foreigners,” not thinking them worth the trouble of studying, or esteeming the knowledge which was only concerned with them and their ways. He had no opportunity of speaking to Paolo till dinner. They were both of them faithful, more or less, to the table-d’hôte at the Leone, where they had first become friends: but Harry’s attendance there now was irregular, and when he entered the dining-room Paolo’s face became radiant with pleasure. He seized his friend’s arm and gave it a squeeze of satisfaction.
“But without doubt you go somewhere in the evening?” he said, with a mixture of wistfulness and triumphant pride. He was proud of Harry’s succès in society; but yet to have so little of him pained the faithful soul. He had bettered his English, but perhaps he had not much improved his happiness by his devotion to this stranger, to whom he had been so useful. Harry gave him very little of his company, and no demonstration of affection in return for his love.
“No; I want you to come to my rooms, Paolo. I want to consult you about something—we’ll have some coffee brought up there, and we’ll have a talk.”
“Benissimo!” said Paolo, glowing with pleasure. “However,” he added with simplicity, “there is little that I can instruct you in now. You know all—you are better as me. But if there is any case that is hard to understand——”
“You make me ashamed of myself,” said Harry; “do you really think I never want to see you but when I have something to ask? I don’t think I am quite so bad as that. Of course I have picked your brains constantly; but still I am not so bad as that.”
At this Paolo was up in arms, as if some terrible accusation had been brought against him.
“Pardon, pardon, Amico,” he said. “Do you think I am finding fault? do you think I make myself a censure over you (he meant censor, but this was unimportant)? It is all otherwise. To see you go into society makes me pleasure—the grandest pleasure. If not me, it is my friend—it is as good—better, as to go myself. You pick my brains—bene! my brains is glad to be pick.”
“I think you are the best fellow in the world,” Harry said, “and I am a beast always to take advantage of you—to come to you whenever I want you.”
“What then is a friend?” said Paolo, with that glistening of the eyes which Harry was always afraid of. And then the excellent fellow suppressed himself, knowing Harry’s objections to a scene. “I am a duffare,” he said, with a laugh, “if there is something I can do that makes me glad.”
“I want your advice, Paolo,” said Harry; “it is nothing about business; it is not information I want from you. I am in a difficulty—I am in trouble—and I want your advice.”