Mr. Carlisle offered the young girl his arm, and led her to the table, saying:
“This is my first attempt at Mariolatry. Quite a success, is it not?”
“If it were only an outward sign of inward grace,” said Clara, laughing, “exterior piety would be quite becoming to you, Severn. You really have an artistic taste. But you are too absent-minded to-day! Can you not see that we are starving?”
Assunta was so accustomed to hear sacred things spoken of lightly, and often irreverently, that she had learned to make a little solitude in her heart, into which she could retire from the strife, or even the thoughtlessness, of tongues, and many a short act of reparation was there performed for those who were unconscious of offence.
“I wonder,” said Mrs. Grey, as after breakfast the party were standing on the loggia—“I wonder if Giovanni has succeeded in finding a good balcony for the races [pg 339] to-morrow. I would not miss seeing them for the world. I dote on horses.”
“I very much doubt,” replied her brother, “if the horses will excite the least admiration, judging from the specimens Sienna has thus far produced. But the races will be interesting, because they are entirely unique. I believe that Giovanni has been very successful in securing a balcony, and he intends to have it surpass all others in decoration; so I hope that the ladies will do their part, not to disgrace his efforts. He will expect the jewels to be set in a manner worthy of the casket which contains them.”
“Never fear, Severn! Do you think a lady ever failed to look her best on such an occasion? An open balcony and a crowd—surely, she needs no other occasion for vanity.”
George Sinclair removed his cigar to remark carelessly:
“And so the admiration of one is, after all, insufficient to satisfy you?”
“No, it is not, you dear, lazy, old fellow, and you know it. It is only because I like your taste to be appreciated that I want others to admire me. I do not think there is a more delicious sensation than to feel that you are pretty to begin with, and then dressed so as to show every point to the best advantage, and to know that every eye is fixed upon you. One can be so innocently unconscious of it all the time.”