Mrs. Riccabocca leaned her cheek on her hand, thoughtfully: “Now, you have told me that, I will observe him with different eyes.”
“Anima mia! I don't see how the difference of your eyes will alter the object they look upon!” grumbled Riccabocca, shaking the ashes out of his pipe.
“The object alters when we see it in a different point of view!” replied Jemima, modestly. “This thread does very well when I look at it in order to sew a button on, but I should say it would never do to tie up Pompey in his kennel.”
“Reasoning by illustration, upon my soul!” ejaculated Riccabocca, amazed.
“And,” continued Jemima, “when I am to regard one who is to constitute the happiness of that dear child, and for life, can I regard him as I would the pleasantest guest of an evening? Ah, trust me, Alphonso—I don't pretend to be wise like you—but, when a woman considers what a man is likely to prove to woman—his sincerity—his honor—his heart—oh, trust me, she is wiser than the wisest man!”
Riccabocca continued to gaze on Jemima with unaffected admiration and surprise. And, certainly, to use his phrase, since he had unbosomed himself to his better half—since he had confided in her, consulted with her, her sense had seemed to quicken—her whole mind to expand.
“My dear,” said the sage. “I vow and declare that Machiavelli was a fool to you. And I have been as dull as the chair I sit upon, to deny myself so many years the comfort and counsel [pg 374] of such a—but, corpo di Baccho! forget all about rank; and so now to bed.”
“One must not holloa till one's out of the wood,” muttered the ungrateful, suspicious villain, as he lighted the chamber candle.
Chapter III.
Riccabocca could not confine himself to the precincts within the walls to which he condemned Violante. Resuming his spectacles, and wrapped in his cloak, he occasionally sallied forth upon a kind of outwatch or reconnoitring expedition—restricting himself, however, to the immediate neighborhood, and never going quite out of sight of his house. His favorite walk was to the summit of a hillock overgrown with stunted brushwood. Here he would seat himself musingly, often till the hoofs of Randal's horse rang on the winding road, as the sun set, over fading herbage, red and vaporous, in autumnal skies. Just below the hillock, and not two hundred yards from his own house, was the only other habitation in view—a charming, thoroughly English cottage, though somewhat imitated from the Swiss—with gable ends, thatched roof, and pretty projecting casements, opening through creepers and climbing roses. From his height he commanded the gardens of this cottage, and his eye of artist was pleased, from the first sight, with the beauty which some exquisite taste had given to the ground. Even in that cheerless season of the year, the garden wore a summer smile; the evergreens were so bright and various, and the few flowers still left, so hardy and so healthful. Facing the south, a colonnade, or covered gallery, of rustic woodwork had been formed, and creeping plants, lately set, were already beginning to clothe its columns. Opposite to this colonnade there was a fountain which reminded Riccabocca of his own at the deserted Casino. It was, indeed, singularly like it: the same circular shape, the same girdle of flowers around it. But the jet from it varied every day—fantastic and multiform, like the sports of a Naïad—sometimes shooting up like a tree, sometimes shaped as a convolvulus, sometimes tossing from its silver spray a flower of vermilion, or a fruit of gold—as if at play with its toy like a happy child. And near the fountain was a large aviary, large enough to inclose a tree. The Italian could just catch a gleam of rich color from the wings of the birds, as they glanced to and fro within the net-work, and could hear their songs, contrasting the silence of the free populace of air, whom the coming winter had already stilled.