“You ask what you are to do with such a man as your father,” her friend said. “I answer, you can let him alone, and I strongly advise you to do so. He is quite capable of thinking and observing without being teased. He leaves you free; do the same by him.”
“I suppose I must,” the girl sighed unwillingly.
Bianca, who remembered her mother only as the little silver cloud fading in the sky, had also her pretty tribute to pay to the grandmother, who had not been many years dead.
“Of course we wished her to be a Catholic,” she said; “but no one could know her and doubt that she was good. She did not believe our dogmas because she did not understand them, but she never spoke an uncharitable word of us. Indeed, I used to think that unconsciously she believed everything. Her religion was like a rose-bush on which only one rose bloomed out, and that rose was Christ. All the rest were just buds with the smallest pink tips showing. She was so dazzled and wondering over her wonderful one rose that she could not think of the others. What a blossoming out there will be when she reaches heaven, if she is not there already!”
While we have been giving this little history, casa Ottant’-otto has been as tranquil as if it were mid-night instead of mid-day. The rooms were perfectly dark, except where a chink in the shutter or a loose hasp let in here and there a light too small to be called a ray, which made a pale glow in one
spot, showing like a blotch on the darkness. Not a sound was heard within, and scarcely a sound from without; for, early as it was in the season, the street had its quiet hour, and the birds, the only noisy people on the garden side, would no more have thought of singing at noon than of remaining silent in the morning.
But, as the afternoon wore on, something stirred on a red cushion in a corner of the dining-room. It was a black cat, called, from its color, the abate. This member of the family rose, stretched himself slowly, first one side, then the other, opened his mouth in a portentous yawn, and seemed to utter an inquiring “Mew!” but, what with sleepiness, warmth, and languor, the sound was very nearly inaudible. Looking about, he saw Adriano, the man-servant, asleep in an arm-chair, his head, in a little scarlet cap with a tassel, dropped on one shoulder, his arms hanging down over the arms of the chair. Wakened, perhaps, by the glance, the man opened his eyes, gathered up his head and arms, and began, in turn, to stretch himself out of sleep, giving an audible yawn instead of a “Mew.” The abate then exerted himself so far as to saunter to the threshold of the door looking into the kitchen. Annunciata, who had placed her chair in a corner of the room in such a manner that the walls supported her while she slept, was just stretching out one foot to pick up the sandal that had dropped off during her nap. All this the cat saw, doubtless. It was too dark for any one else to see.
Presently Adriano opened a half shutter in the dining-room, admitting a faint light; then, passing, with slip-shod feet, into the sala,
threw the windows wide open. Instantly all the bright out-doors, which had been waiting to enter—sunshine, perfume, and west wind—rushed in together, lit the gilding in a new glitter, reddened the velvet again, whitened the curtains and set them blowing about, roused a hundred little winking mischiefs in the carvings, and almost brought a smile into the many pictured faces on the walls that had been waiting so long in the dark with their eyes wide open.
After a little interval, the Signora came out of her room; then Isabel’s bright face appeared.