A sudden spasm, gone almost as soon as it had come, contracted the muscles of Vanna’s face; her teeth bit hard into her underlip; but never a word answered she.
“Come,” said the Captain a few minutes later; “put on your things and let us go for a stroll in the Park. It’s a lovely afternoon, and there will be no end of swells in the Row.”
Nothing loth was Giovanna to comply. As yet she had seen hardly anything of London, and what she had seen had not impressed her over favourably. It had been one of the dreams of her life to see Hyde Park in the height of the season, and now her dream was about to be fulfilled. In ten minutes she was ready to set out.
The Captain chartered a hansom—it was the first time his niece had been in one—telling the driver to take his time and go by way of Regent Street and Piccadilly. Here at length was London as Vanna had imagined it to be.
As the Captain had prophesied, the Row was crowded. They strolled about for a while in the warm sunshine, and then found a couple of chairs whence they could take in the varied features of the passing show at their leisure. A proud man was Captain Verinder that day. In all that gay and fashionable throng there were not, in his opinion, more than three or four women who in point of looks were fit to be matched with the one by his side—that is to say (to compare one thing with another), if a rose may be considered to be in the perfection of its beauty when it is fully blown, and not when it is merely a blushing bud of undeveloped possibilities. Although nearing her fortieth birthday, Giovanna—unlike the majority of her countrywomen, who age early—was remarkably young-looking for her years. But then she was English on her mother’s side, and that may have had something to do with the matter. She was wearing a charming half-mourning costume, with bonnet to match, which she had bought since her arrival in London. Many were the glances of admiration of which she was the recipient, many the heads that were turned for a second look at her tall figure, so stately and yet so graceful, with her pale classic features, clear-cut as some antique gem, as she threaded her way through the crowd with the proud composed air of one “to the manner born.” Well might Captain Verinder feel proud of his charge.
“Do you see that blasé-looking man driving that pair of splendid chestnuts?” he said to Vanna a few minutes after they had sat down. “He is Lord Elvaston, one of the greatest roués about town. He used to know me well enough before he came into his fortune a score of years ago, when he was not above borrowing a five-pound note from anybody who would lend him one. Now, of course, he passes me as if he had never set eyes on me in his life. But such is the way of the world, more especially of the world of fashion.”
Then a few minutes later, “Note that painted woman in the too palpable wig being driven slowly past in her yellow chariot. That is Lady Anne Baxendale. Her father was only a country rector on three hundred a year. The rectory grounds adjoined those of the house where I was born. Your mother, when a girl, and little Nan Cotsmore were great friends. I’ve seen them play skipping-rope by the hour together.”
But Verinder had another motive in view in thus introducing his niece to one of the most striking spectacles which the metropolis has to offer for the delectation of the strangers within its gates. He wanted to excite in her bosom a feeling which should be compounded in about equal measure of envy and discontent—envy of those who, although, for the passing hour, she seemed as one of themselves, were yet as far removed from her by their wealth and position as if she and they were inhabitants of two totally different spheres (which, indeed, in one sense, they were); and discontent with the humble and prosaic surroundings of her own obscure existence. If he had read Giovanna aright, it seemed to him that it ought not to be a difficult matter to foment within her the very undesirable sentiments in question.
“Are you sorry, my dear, that I brought you here this afternoon?” he asked, after a longer pause than common.
“Sorry! oh no, how could I be? It is a beautiful sight. Nay, it is more than beautiful, it is magnificent. This is London as I used to dream of it.”