"Now I wish we could go to Paestum, and see what you would say to pure old Greek work. But it would be as much as our lives are worth, I suppose."
"Yes, Mr. Thayer," his wife cried; "don't talk about Paestum; they are going to-morrow to the point."
"The point? what point? the coast is full of points."
"The Punta di Campanella, papa," said Christina.
"I thought you were going to Capri?"
"We'll keep Capri till Sandie comes. He would be a help on the water. All our marine excursions we will keep until Sandie comes. I only hope he'll be good and come."
The very air seemed full of pleasant anticipations; and Dolly would have been extremely happy; was happy; until on going in to dinner she saw the wineglasses on the table, and bottles suspiciously cooling in water. Her heart sank down, down. If she had had time and had dared, she would have remonstrated; but yet what could she say? She knew, too, that the wine at Mr. Thayer's table, like everything else on it, would be of the best procurable; better and more alluring than her father could get elsewhere. In her secret heart there was a bitter unspoken cry of remonstrance. O friends! O friends!—she was ready to say,—do you know what you are doing? You are dropping sweet poison into my life; bitter poison; deadly poison, where you little think it; and you do it with smiles and coloured glasses! She could hardly eat her dinner. She saw with indescribable pain and a sort of powerless despair, how Mr. Copley felt the license of his friend's house and example, and how the delicacy of the vintages offered him acted to dull his conscience; Mr. Thayer praising them and hospitably pressing his guest to partake. He himself drank very moderately and in a kind of mere matter-of-fact way; it was part of the dinner routine; and St. Leger tasted, as a man who knows indeed what is good, but also makes it a matter of no moment; no more than his bread or his napkin. Mr. Copley drank with eager gusto, and glass after glass; even, Dolly thought, in a kind of bravado. And this would go on every day while their visit lasted; and perhaps not at dinner only; there were luncheons, and for aught she knew, suppers. Dolly's heart was hot within her; so hot that after dinner she could not keep herself from speaking on the subject to Christina. Yet she must begin as far from her father as possible. The two girls were sitting on the bank under a fig-tree, looking out on the wonderful spectacle of the bay of Naples at evening.
"There is a matter I have been thinking a great deal about lately," she said, with a little heartbeat at her daring.
"I daresay," laughed Christina. "That is quite in your way. Oh, I do wish Sandie would come! He ought to be here."
"This is no laughing matter, Christina. It is a serious question."