"It is against the contract to dance on the second floor. The guests might fall through on to our heads," observed Bianca, tranquilly. "Bettina told me so, and the porter told her—"
The princess frowned. "Bettina talks too much," she said, with an unmistakable air of desiring that the subject should drop.
Bianca relapsed into silence. It was very evident that, however devout the Rossano girl might be, she would not be allowed to make her acquaintance. Her observant eyes had watched the Abbé Roux's countenance as she made her little effort to further that desired event, for she was very well aware that no step was likely to be taken in this, or, indeed, in any other matter unless the Abbé approved of it. Privately, Bianca detested the priest, and with a child's unerring instinct—for she was still scarcely more than a child in some things—she felt that he disliked her.
Nor was this state of things of recent origin. Ever since the Abbé Roux had become, as it were, a member of the Montefiano household, Bianca Acorari had entertained the same feeling towards him. Her obstinacy on this point, indeed, had first awakened the princess to the fact that her step-daughter had a very decided will of her own, which, short of breaking, nothing was likely to conquer.
This stubbornness, as the princess called it, had shown itself in an unmistakable manner when Bianca, though only twelve years old, had firmly and absolutely refused to confess to Monsieur l'Abbé. In vain the princess had threatened punishment both immediate and future, and in vain the Abbé Roux had admonished her. Make her confession to him, she would not. To any other priest, yes; to him, no—not then or ever. There was nothing more to be said or done—for both the princess and Monsieur l'Abbé knew well enough that the child was within her rights according to the laws of the Church, though of course she herself was unaware of the fact. There had been nothing for it, as weeks went on and Bianca never drew back from the position she had taken up, but to give way as gracefully as might be—but it was doubtful if the Abbé Roux had ever forgiven the want of confidence in him which the child had displayed, although he had afterwards told her that the Church left to all penitents the right of choice as to their confessors.
When Bianca grew older, the princess had intended to send her to the Convent of the Assumption in order to complete her education, and at the same time place her under some discipline. The girl was delicate, however, and it was eventually decided that it was better that she should be educated at home.
Perhaps it was the gradual consciousness that she was debarred from associating with any one of her own age which had made Bianca think wistfully that it would be pleasant to make the acquaintance of the attractive-looking girl whom she passed occasionally on the staircase, and who had come to live under the same roof as herself. She could not but notice that the older she became the more she seemed to be cut off from the society of others of her years. Formerly she had occasionally been allowed to associate with the children of her step-mother's friends and acquaintances, and, at rare intervals, they had been invited to some childish festivity at Palazzo Acorari.
By degrees, however, her life had become more and more isolated, and for the last year or two the princess, a governess who came daily to teach her modern languages and music, and her maid and attendant, Bettina, had been her only companions.
Rightly or wrongly, Bianca associated the restriction of her surroundings with the influence of the Abbé Roux, and the suspicion only increased the dislike she had always instinctively borne him.
It never entered into her head, however, to suggest to the princess that her life was an exceedingly dull one. Indeed, having no means of comparing it with the lives of other girls of her age, she scarcely realized that it was dull, and she accepted it as the natural order of things. It had not been until she had seen Giacinta Rossano that an indefinable longing for some companionship other than that of those much older than herself began to make itself felt within her, and she had found herself wondering why she had no brothers and sisters, no cousins, such as other girls must have, with whom they could associate.