Rita was busy with her housekeeping, arranging the affairs of the day. Her husband was in the office at his work; her father gone out, no doubt about business; her little children enjoying the morning air in the garden. All had begun pleasantly as usual in the well-ordered, calmly constituted life. She had been a little disturbed, a very little, last night by her visitors, with the slightest possible jealousy in her mind of the new-comer, who seemed to have some sort of connection with her husband’s early life, that portion of it with which she was completely unacquainted. It was a mere superficial sentiment, not strong enough to be called jealousy, yet veering that way; for she did not like to think that anybody anywhere could know more about her Harry than his wife, a feeling which even in its most unreasonable phases is not uncommon among wives—or husbands either, for that matter. But that Miss Joscelyn was going away, was gone away so far as the Vice-Consul’s household was concerned, and Rita thought no more of her—She was interrupted in the very midst of her discussion of the spese, and examination of the contents of the cook’s basket, which old Benedetta was helping to turn over, and making sharp remarks upon, to the damage of the cook’s temper, as so much dearer and not nearly so good as in her time—by a message that a lady wanted to see her. She was predisposed to be annoyed by it. “A lady! how often must I tell you to bring me the name! It can be nobody for me; it must be some one for your master,” she said. The man was very humble and apologetic; he represented that the English names were very hard to pronounce; that it was the young lady who had been there last evening—the young lady who resembled the bambino so much. “Resembled the bambino? What bambino?” cried Rita. And then old Benedetta burst in and explained that all the servants had remarked it—that the English young lady was the very image of nostro bambino, our own blessed baby whom everybody admired.
“Resemblances are very strange,” Benedetta said; “they will come without rhyme or reason—for of course our darling can have nothing to do with a stranger—a young Signorina Inglese whom no one ever saw before.”
“I wonder you can allow yourself to talk such nonsense, Benedetta. There is not the slightest resemblance,” Rita said. The other servants bowed and deprecated, and agreed that the Signora must know best; but Benedetta stood like a rock, and completely ruffled the impatient, fanciful temper of her mistress. Rita delayed consequently as long as she could find something to occupy her in her kitchen, wilfully keeping her untimely visitor waiting. “What can she want with me? She had better ask for Harry if she has anything to say. Like my baby indeed! I wonder what next?” Rita said to herself. But at last, when there was no further excuse, she mounted reluctantly the stairs, and walked slowly towards the drawing-room, Lydia within counting her deliberate steps with a beating heart that went a great deal faster. It was a duel that was about to take place between the two.
“Good morning,” Rita said, coldly; “Italian servants never can manage English names. I was told it was a young lady, and that is vague. Pray sit down. I hope there is nothing amiss with Lady Brotherton or Sir John.”
“I come—entirely on business of my own,” said Lydia, with a little timidity. She was taller and altogether a more imposing person by nature than this small, little, half Italian matron; but Rita had always a certain grandeur about her, and she was the invaded châtelaine, the defender of her house against an intruder. Lydia felt almost afraid of her, and a little compunctious too.
“My husband would probably be of more use than I can be. But pray sit down, and if there is anything I can do——” Rita said, with a majestic wave of her hand towards a chair.
But Lydia did not sit down. Her hands sought each other in that same clasp of agitation which was habitual to her mother. “I must beg you to pardon me. It is about your husband that I want to ask.”
“My husband!” Rita said, and no more.
They stood and looked at each other for a moment, Lydia, appealing, agitated, as if (she felt) there was something wrong in her interest in Harry, the little wife towering over her in offended dignity, something like a Queen Eleanor, though without any cause.
“I want you to tell me if you know anything of his family, or where he came from; and when he came here? and if he has ever spoken to you of any of——, and why he has never taken any notice? It must seem very strange to you,” Lydia sat pausing, trying a smile of anxious deprecation, “that I should ask such questions as these.”