Nadine, with that swift intuition into, the thoughts of others which made her the most sympathetic of companions where she deigned to be sympathetic at all, guessed what was passing through the girl's mind, and hastened to relieve her embarrassment by asking to be permitted to remain out of doors, alleging that the air was so soft and the scent of the orange-blossoms so sweet, that she was reluctant to leave either.
'Will Madame really prefer it?' said Damaris, unable to conceal her relief.
'There is the same view to be seen from here,' she added as she opened a door in the wall and showed them the southern sea stretching far away, shining blue and violet through arches of olive-boughs lying all hushed and bright and warm in the glow of the afternoon sun.
Then she caught a little boy by the shoulder, the son of Raphael, who was looking on stupidly.
'Run and bring some wine and some fruit,' she whispered to him, 'and ask Catherine to send the old silver.'
Her sense of the obligations of hospitality was stronger than the dread of her great lady.
'It is not because she is great,' she told herself, angry with her own timidity. 'But she is so wonderful, so wonderful!'
That supreme distinction in the wife of Othmar, which, when she walked down a throne-room, made half the other women there look vulgar, had its charm even for this child, who could not have given a name to the superiority which awed and fascinated her, even whilst it made her ready to hide her head beneath the stones like the lizards.
Nadine, pleased with everything, or so professing herself, sat on a stone bench within sight of the sea and quartered a mandarin orange with her white fingers, whilst the sun played on the jewels of her great rings.