"And upon what?"
"Upon what? Oh, upon something very simple. It would depend upon whether I were in love with him."
"I don't think it is at all simple," observed Bianca. "How would you know if you were in love with him or not?"
Mademoiselle Durand laughed outright. Then she became suddenly grave. "Well," she replied, after hesitating a moment, "I will tell you. If I thought I did not know—if I were not sure—I should say to myself: 'Marie, you are in love. Why? Because, if you are not, you would be sure of the fact—oh, quite sure!'"
"And supposing you were in love with him?" demanded Bianca. She looked beyond Mademoiselle Durand as she spoke.
"Ah—if I were, then—well, then I should leave the rest to him to manage. Between ourselves, I believe that to be what is troubling the poor young Rossano. He does not know if the girl he loves has any idea that he does so, and still less if she could ever return his love. It is very sad. If I were that girl, I should certainly find some means of letting him know that I cared for him—"
"But you say she cannot—that she would never be allowed—"
Mademoiselle Durand sang the first few bars of the habanera in "Carmen" to herself. "When two people are in love," she observed, "they do not always stop to think of what is allowed. But, if you please, Donna Bianca, we will go on with our history—I mean, our French history, not that of Monsieur Silvio Rossano," and Mademoiselle Durand suddenly reassumed her professional demeanor.
It was of this little interlude in her morning's studies that Bianca Acorari was meditating as she sat waiting for the hour when she would have to accompany her step-mother in her afternoon drive. She wished that Mademoiselle Durand would have been more communicative. It was certainly interesting to hear about Giacinta Rossano's brother. Silvio! Yes, it was a nice name, decidedly—and somehow, she thought, it suited its owner. It must be an odd sensation—that of being in love. Perhaps one always saw in the imagination the person one was in love with. One saw a well-built figure and a sun-tanned face with dark, curling hair clustering over a broad brow, and a pair of dark-blue eyes that looked—but, how they looked! as though asking a perpetual question.... How pleasant it would be there in the gardens of Villa Acorari!—so quiet and cool in the deep shade of the ilex-trees, with the sound of the water falling from the fountains. But it was a little dull to be alone—always alone. What a difference if she had had a brother, as Giacinta Rossano had. He would have wandered about with her sometimes, perhaps, in these gardens ... and he and she would have sat and talked together by the fountains where the water was always making a soft music of its own. What was the story she had heard the people tell of some heathen god of long ago who haunted the ilex grove? How still it was—and how the water murmured always ... and the eyes looked at her, always with that question in their blue depths—and the graceful head with its short, close curls bent towards her ... the god, of course—they said he often came—and how his sweet curved lips smiled at her as he stood in that chequered ray of sunlight slanting through the heavy foliage overhead....
And with a little sigh Bianca passed from dreaming into sleep; her face, with its crown of tawny gold hair, thrown into sharp relief by the red damask cushions of the chair on which she was sitting, and her lips parted in a slight smile.