“I do not care whether she does or not.”
“Then you have not learned to envy her?”
“What have I to envy?”
Hortense paused, with a momentary gleam of impatience in her eyes.
“Has the child any enthusiasm? Let us try her on another surface. Do you remember your father, cara mia?”
Barbara’s eyes met the Mancini’s with a sudden intense stare.
“My father?”
“He was a great scholar, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Books become such friends to us! Did he teach you—at all?”