“I am kind—to me, not to you, M. ’Erbert,” said Giovanna; “when I tell you it is dull, dull à mourir the moment you go away.”
“Yet you have spent a good many months here without Herbert, Madame Jean,” said Reine; “if it had been so dull, you might have gone away.”
“Ah, mademoiselle! where could I have gone to? I am not rich like you; I have not parents that love me. If I go home now,” cried Giovanna, with a laugh, “it will be to the room behind the shop where my belle-mère sits all the day, where they cook the dinner, where I am the one that is in the way, always. I have no money, no people to care for me. Even little Jean they take from me. They say, ‘Tenez Gi’vanna; she has not the ways of children.’ Have not I the ways of children, M. ’Erbert? That is what they would say to me, if I went to what you call ’ome.”
“Reine,” said Herbert, in an undertone, “how can you be so cruel, reminding the poor thing how badly off she is? I hope you will not think of going away,” he added, turning to Giovanna. “Reine and I will be too glad that you should stay; and as for your flattering appreciation of our society, I for one am very grateful,” said the young fellow. “I am very happy to be able to do anything to make Whiteladies pleasant to you.”
Miss Susan came in as he said this with Everard, who was going away; but she was too much preoccupied by her own cares to attend to what her nephew was saying. Everard appreciated the position more clearly. He saw the grateful look with which Giovanna turned her beautiful eyes to the young master of the house, and he saw the pleased vanity and complaisance in Herbert’s face. “What an ass he is!” Everard thought to himself; and then he quoted privately with rueful comment,—
“ ‘On him each courtier’s eye was bent,
To him each lady’s look was lent:’
all because the young idiot has Whiteladies, and is the head of the house. Bravo! Herbert, old boy,” he said aloud, though there was nothing particularly appropriate in the speech, “you are having your innings. I hope you will make the most of them. But now that I am no longer wanted, I am going off. I suppose when it is warm enough for water parties, I shall come into fashion again; Sophy and Kate will manage that.”
“Well, Everard, if I were you I should have more pride,” said Miss Susan. “I would not allow myself to be taken up and thrown aside as those girls please. What you can see in them baffles me. They are not very pretty. They are very loud, and fast and noisy—”
“I think so too!” cried Giovanna, clapping her hands. “They are my enemies: they take you away, M. ’Erbert and Mademoiselle Reine. They make it dull here.”