But she was not to escape so easily. Old Francesca had been Ombra’s nurse. She was not so very old, but had aged, as peasant women of her nation do. She was a Tuscan born, with the shrill and high-pitched voice natural to her district, and she had followed the fortunes of the Andersons all over the world, from the time of her nursling’s birth. She was, in consequence, a most faithful servant and friend, knowing no interests but those of her mistress, but at the same time a most uncompromising monitor. Ombra knew what was in store for her, as soon as she discovered Francesca, with her back turned, folding up the dress she had worn in the morning. The chances are that Ombra would have fled, had she been able to do so noiselessly, but she had already betrayed herself by closing the door.
‘Francesca,’ she said, affecting an ease which she did not feel, ‘are you still here? Are you not in bed? You will tire yourself out. Never mind those things. I will put them away myself.’
‘The things might be indifferent to me,’ said Francesca, turning round upon her, ‘but you are not. My young lady, I have a great deal to say to you.’
This conversation was chiefly in Italian, both the interlocutors changing, as pleased them, from one language to another; but as it is unnecessary to cumber the page with italics, or the reader’s mind with two languages, I will take the liberty of putting it in English, though in so doing I may wrong Francesca’s phrases. When her old nurse addressed her thus, Ombra trembled—half in reality because she was a chilly being, and half by way of rousing her companion’s sympathy. But Francesca was ruthless.
‘You have the cold, I perceive,’ she said, ‘and deserve to have it. Seems to me that if you thought sometimes of putting a little warmth in your heart, instead of covering upon your body, that would answer better. What has the little cousin done, Dio mio, to make you as if you had been for a night on the mountains? I look to see the big ice-drop hanging from your fingers, and the snow-flakes in your hair! You have the cold!—bah! you are the cold!—it is in you!—it freezes! I, whose blood is in your veins, I stretch out my hand to get warm, and I chill, I freeze, I die!’
‘I am Ombra,’ said the girl, with a smile, ‘you know; how can I warm you, Francesca? It is not my nature.’
‘Are you not, then, God’s making, because they have given you a foolish name?’ cried Francesca. ‘The Ombra I love, she is the Ombra that is cool, that is sweet, that brings life when one comes out of a blazing sun. You say the sun does not blaze here; but what is here, after all? A piece of the world which God made! When you were little, Santissima Madonna! you were sweet as an olive orchard; but now you are sombre and dark, like a pine-wood on the Apennines. I will call you ‘Ghiaccia,’[A] not Ombra any more.’
‘It was not my fault. You are unjust. I had a headache. You said so yourself.’
‘Ah, disgraziata! I said it to shield you. You have brought upon my conscience a great big—what you call fib. I hope my good priest will not say it was a lie!’
‘I did not ask you to do it,’ cried Ombra. ‘And then there was mamma, crying over that girl as if there never had been anything like her before!’