Kate looked on with wistful and startled eyes. It was almost the first time that the idea of real dissension between these two had crossed her mind; and still more this infinitely startling doubt whether all that was said to her was true. At least there had been concealment; and was it really, truly the good of Ombra and Kate, or some private arrangement with Uncle Courtenay, that was in her aunt’s mind. This suggestion came suddenly into her very heart, wounding her as with an arrow; and from that day, though sometimes lessening and sometimes deepening, the cloud upon Ombra’s face came back. But as she grew less amiable, she grew more powerful. Henceforward the party became guided by her wayward fancies. She took a sudden liking for one of the quietest secluded places—a village on the little blue lake of Zug—and there they settled for some time, without rhyme or reason. Green slopes, with grey stone-peaks above, and glimpses of snow beyond, shut in this lake-valley. I agree with Ombra that it is very sweet in its stillness, the lake so blue, the air so clear, and the noble nut-bearing trees so umbrageous, shadowing the pleasant châlets. In the centre was a little white-washed village church among its graves, its altar all decked with stately May lilies, the flowers of the Annunciation. The church had no beauty of architecture, no fine pictures—not even great antiquity to recommend it; but Ombra was fond of the sunshiny, still place. She would go there when she was tired, and sit down on one of the rush-bottomed chairs, and sometimes was to be seen kneeling furtively on the white altar steps.
Kate, who roamed up and down everywhere, and had soon all the facility of a young mountaineer, would stop at the open church-door as she came down from the hills, alpenstock in hand, sunburnt and agile as a young Diana.
‘You are not going to turn a Roman Catholic, Ombra?’ she said. ‘I think it would make my aunt very unhappy.’
‘I am not going to turn anything,’ said Ombra. ‘I shall never be different from what I am—never any better. One tries and tries, and it is no good.’
‘Then stop trying, and come up on the hills and shake it off,’ said Kate.
‘Perhaps I might if I were like you; but I am not like you.’
‘Or let us go on, and see people and do things again—do all sorts of things. I like this little lake,’ said Kate. ‘One has a home-feeling. I almost think I should begin to poke about the cottages, and find fault with the people, if we were to stay long. But that is not your temptation, Ombra. Why do you like to stay?’
‘I stay because it is so still—because nobody comes here, nothing can happen here; it must always be the same for ever and for ever and ever!’ cried Ombra. ‘The hills and the deep water, and the lilies in the church—which are artificial, you know, and cannot fade.’
Kate did not understand this little bitter jibe at the end of her cousin’s speech; but was overwhelmed with surprise when Ombra next morning suggested that they should resume their journey. They were losing their time where they were, she said; and as, if they were to go to Italy for the Winter, it would be necessary to return by Switzerland next year, she proposed to strike off from the mountains at this spot, to go to Germany, to the strange old historical cities that were within reach. ‘Kate should see Nuremberg,’ she said; and Kate, to her amazement, found the whole matter settled, and the packing commenced that day. Ombra managed the whole journey, and was a practical person, handy and rational, until they came to that old-world place, where she became reveuse and melancholy once more.
‘Do you like this better than Switzerland?’ Kate asked, as they looked down from their windows along the three-hundred-years-old street, where it was so strange to see people walking about in ordinary dresses and not in trunkhose and velvet mantles.