“No,” said Frederick, becoming bewildered. He had risen up, but she detained him with her two hands holding his arm.
“That is a pity. We were never rich. If you had been rich we might have taken Niccolo, who could have done everything—he is so clever. We might have stayed here. Stop!” she said suddenly, “there is a little cloud coming up over your face. Do not let it. Smile. You smiled when you came in first, and I knew that it was you, and was so happy.”
“My poor child! Why were you happy?”
“Because I knew it was you,” she said vehemently. “And now you talk of your mother. I do not want to go to your mother. Let me stay with you.”
“Listen, Innocent,” he said, with a shade of impatience stealing over him. “There is no possibility of questioning where you are to go. You must go to my mother. I live there too. I cannot afford to have a house for myself. You must learn to be fond of my mother, and do whatever she wishes. Now let me go, please. I am going out to see the place. If we leave to-morrow, I may not have another opportunity. Come, come, you must let me go.”
She was looking up into his face, studying it intently, as if it were a book, a close, penetrating gaze, before which his eyes somewhat wavered, hesitating to meet hers. An idea that she would find him out if she gazed thus into the depths of his soul crossed his mind and made him half angry, half afraid. Perhaps she divined this feeling; for she let his arm go slowly, sliding her hands away from it, with a half caressing, half apologetic motion. She smiled as she thus released him, but said nothing. There was something pretty in the act by which she set him free—a mingling of resignation and entreaty that at once amused and touched him. Go if you will—it seemed to say—but yet stay with me! It was hard to resist the moral restraint after the physical was withdrawn. But Frederick reflected that to spend this his only day in a strange new place—in Italy—shut up tête-à-tête with a girl who was a stranger to him, though she was his cousin, would be extremely ridiculous. Yet he could not leave her abruptly. He stroked her soft hair once more paternally as he stood by her.
“I will come back in time to take you out to this lady’s to dinner,” he said. “I suppose they have been kind to you? And in the meantime you must see after your packing. I have no doubt you will find a great many things to do. I am sorry you have not a maid to help you. Have you wraps for the journey? You will want something warm.”
She took up her old velvet mantle with a startled look, and turned it round in her hands, looking at it. It was a garment to delight the very soul of a painter; but, alas! it was not such a garment as Frederick Eastwood, who was not a painter, could walk about by the side of, or travel with.
“Is that all you have?” he asked, with a little dismay.
“I have a shawl,” said Innocent, looking at him with astonished eyes.