"And she married some one else?"

Both Aurora and Estelle were craning toward the speaker in a curiosity full of sympathy.

Leslie was used to seeing them hang on her lips. "I do love to hear you talk!" Aurora candidly said. "It doesn't make any difference whether I know what you're talking about, it fascinates me, the way you say things!" And the compliment disposed Leslie to talk to them no otherwise than she talked with Lady Linbrook or Countess Costetti, leaving them to grasp or not her allusions and fine shades. She was by a number of years the youngest of the three drawn up to the fire; yet some advantage of fluency, collectedness, habit of good society--a neat effect altogether of authority, made her seem in a way the oldest.

"Violet," she began, like a grown person willing to indulge children with a story, "is Madame Balm de Breze's sister. You saw Madame de Breze that Friday evening at our house. Violet is very like her, only much younger and a blonde. Amabel is--let us call things by their names in the seclusion of this snug fireside--Amabel is scrawny; Violet was ethereal. Amabel is sharp-featured; Violet's face was delicate and clear-cut. I say _was_, because she has grown much stouter. We have known them since they first came to Florence, and have been friends without being pa.s.sionately attached. They are Americans, but had lived in Paris since Violet was a baby. They came here, orphans, because it is cheaper. They used to live on the top floor of a stony old palace in Via de' Servi, where they painted fans on silk, sending them to a firm in Paris. Amabel did them exquisitely: shepherds and shepherdesses, corners of old gardens, Cupids--Watteau effects, veritable miniature work. The little sister was beginning to do them well, too; she painted only flowers. Amabel had no objection to Violet marrying Gerald. He was as far as possible from being a good match, but in those days both Amabel and Violet seemed to live in an atmosphere that excluded the consideration of things from a vulgar material point of view. Violet and Gerald were alike in that, and so very much alike in their superfine tastes and ways of thinking. _Nous autres_ who live upon this earth wondered how they would keep the pot boiling in case of 'that not remote contingent, _la famille_.' Gerald has an income simply tiny. You would hardly believe how small. We supposed that now he would paint a little more than he ever has done with the idea of pleasing the general public and securing patronage. They were so much in love, anyhow, and made such an interesting pair, that one's old romantic feelings were gratified by seeing them together. They were to wait until she was twenty-one, when a crumb of money in trust for her would fall due. Then Amabel surprises us all by marrying De Breze. Violet of course lives with them, and with them goes to Paris. And in Paris she becomes Madame Pfaffenheim. _Tout bonnement!_"

"Oh, the wretch, the bad-hearted minx!"

"No," said Leslie, reflectively. She turned from the warmth of the fire and let her eyes rest on the gray sky seen in wide patches through the three great windows, arched at the top and blocked at the bottom by wrought-iron guards, that admitted into the red and green room such very floods of light--"no," Leslie repeated. "One is the sort of person one is. The sin is to pretend. I don't believe Violet knew the sort of person she was until it came to the test. She thought, very likely, that she was all composed of poetry and fine sentiments and eternal love. She wasn't; and there it is. When she had the chance actually to choose, she preferred money, a fine establishment, luxury, and she took them. How ghastly if, with that nature concealed in her behind the pearl and pale roses, she had married poor Gerald! It's much better as it is, don't you agree with me? I call him fortunate beyond words."

"Well, of course; that's one way of looking at it."

"It's his way. Gerald knows just how fortunate he has been, and it's exactly that which makes him so miserable. At first, you understand, he could lay the entire blame on the De Brezes; he was sure they had in some mysterious way constrained her, and though he was angrily, tragically, suicidally wretched, it was one kind of woe--a clean, cla.s.sic woe, I will call it. He believed it shared by her in the secret of her uncongenial conjugal life. '_Ich grolle nicht_,' he could say, and all that. But a year or two ago she came to Florence with Pfaffenheim on a visit to her sister. I don't know how Gerald felt, whether he tried to avoid her or tried to see her. That he saw her, however, is certain. She is perfectly happy, my dears, in her marriage!

And that she should love Pfaffenheim, or be proud of him, is inconceivable. So her happiness rests entirely upon the fact of her riches and worldly consequence."

"Say what you please, I call her a nasty, mean thing!" exclaimed Aurora.

Leslie shrugged her shoulders, as if saying: "Have it your way; but a more philosophical view is possible."

"She was looking very beautiful," she went on. "Much more beautiful than before, but in such a different way! From diaphanous she has become opaque; from airy, solid. She brought a most wonderful wardrobe, and, kept in the background with her husband, two fat babies."

"I should think she would have been ashamed to come back here."

"Oh, no; not Violet. She was enchanted to show herself in her glory to those who remembered her in the modest plumage of her girlhood. Florence did not really like it, because she affected toward Florence the att.i.tude of one who comes to it from places immeasurably grander. You would have thought Florence an amusing little hole where she long ago, by some accident, had spent a month or two. She found us quaint, provincial, old-fashioned. She was witty about us. She criticized us with a freedom and publicity that made her funnier to us than we were funny to her. It was not an endearing thing to do or a very intelligent one. It was, in fact, rather antipathetic."

"Antip--I call it the actions of a _bug!_"

"You can see how it all left Gerald. The Violet he cared for was obviously no more. Worse than that, she had probably never been.

Comforting knowledge, isn't it, that for years you have treasured memories that had no reality to start from; that you have suffered agonies of love without any real object. Nauseous! Intolerable! A tragedy that is shown to have been all along a farce! To a man of imagination, to a person as sincere as Gerald, you can see what it would mean. You can see what it would leave behind it."

"I should think he would just despise her, and shake it off, and forget her as she deserves."

"Your simple device, dear Aurora, is the one he adopted. But to have an empty hollow where your beautiful h.o.a.rd of pure gold was stored is a thing it takes time to grow used to. He is not an unhappy lover now, certainly; but he is a man who has been robbed, and he has fallen into the habit of low spirits. It is a thousand pities his poor mother and sister could not have been spared to make a home for him. Being too much alone is bad for any one. He shuts himself in with his blues, and they are growing more and more confirmed. Love is a curious thing." Leslie said the latter separately and after a pause, as if from a particular case she had been led to reviewing the whole subject. "It complicates life so," she added, and rose to go.

They teased her to remain and lunch with them. But Leslie was suddenly more tired at the contemplation of life than she had been when she came.

The total result of her call had not been to cheer her, for by an uncomfortable stirring within, as soon as she had finished, she was made to repent having talked to outsiders about things so personal, so private, regarding Gerald--Gerald, who was infinitely reserved. It seemed a crime against friendship. That somebody else would have been sure to tell his story did not excuse her.

Leslie's mood to talk was over for that morning and she went home, but not before she had been forced to take a bottle of perfume which she had carelessly picked up off Aurora's toilet-table, sniffed, and praised; also, lifted out of their vase, a bunch of orchids for her mother; and for Lily the box of sweets that had stood invitingly open on the sitting-room table.

Next time Aurora saw Gerald--it was on Viale Principe Amedeo--she waved to him.

He did not see it. He was just aware of a victoria coming down the middle of the street he was preparing to cross and of something fluttering, but that it concerned him he did not suspect.

Then suddenly the victoria, like a huge Jack-in-the-box, shot up a figure, and he recognized Mrs. Hawthorne standing at full height in the moving carriage, and waving both hands, as he must suppose, n.o.body else being near,--to him.

He lifted his hat. He saw her reach for the coachman and by touch make him aware that she wished to stop. The horses were pulled up. Mrs.

Hawthorne, from the seat into which the jerk had thrown her, made beckoning signs to him, laughing the while, and calling, "Mr. Fane! Mr.

Fane!"

He went to stand at the carriage-step.

"I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing."

"I thought I was," said Gerald, with that scant smile of his; "but I was not so fortunate as to find you at home."

It was true that he had gone to her door one afternoon, having previously caught a glimpse of her in the heart of the city, shopping.

"You mean to say you came?"

"You did not find my card?"

"No; but it's all right. This is Miss Madison--Mr. Fane. We are together. What have you got to do?"

Gerald looked as if the question had not been quite clear, and he waited for some amplification of it before he could answer.

"Have you got anything very important to do? Aren't you lonesome? Don't you want to jump in and come home with us? Wish you would."

Gerald smiled again in his remote way, and looked as if he knew, as any one would know, that this was not meant to be taken seriously.

"I have just seen a beautiful spectacle," he said, after a vague head-shake that thanked her shadowily for an unreal invitation. "A game of _pallone_, which is the nearest to your football that boys have over here. Beautiful bronzed athletes at exercise, a delightful sight, statues in motion. I go to see them whenever I can.--The days are becoming very short, are they not?"

"Yes. Jump in and come home with us. Tell you what we'll do. I'll go down into the kitchen and make some soda biscuits that we'll have hot for supper--with maple syrup. We've had a big box of sugar come."

Gerald again smiled his civil, but joyless, smile, and after another vague head-shake that thanked, but eluded the question, he said: "They are very indigestible; hot bread is not good for the health. At least, that is what they tell us over here. We keep our bread two days before eating it, or longer. But I am afraid I am detaining you."

The horses were jingling their bits, frisking their docked tails. The driver, checking their restless attempts to start, was giving them smothered thunder in Italian. Gerald withdrew by a step from the danger to his shins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I thought," said Mrs. Hawthorne, "that you were going to come and take us sight-seeing"]

"Oh, jump in!" said Mrs. Hawthorne for the third time. And because his choice lay between saying curtly, "Impossible!" and letting the impatient horses proceed, or else obeying, Gerald, who hated being rude to women, found himself irresolutely climbing in, just long enough, as he intended, to explain that he could not and must not go home with them to the hot biscuits and syrup.

The little third seat had been let down for him; his knees were snugly wedged in between those of the ladies. Aurora was beaming over at him; Estelle was beaming, too. Aurora's smile was a blandishment; Estelle's was a light. The horses were flying toward the Lungarno. And he gave up; he helplessly gave up trying to find an excuse for asking to be set down again and allowed to go his lonely way.

It might be entertaining, he tried to think, to see what they had done to the Hermitage. But no! That was very sure to be revolting. If the evening were to afford entertainment, it must be found in watching this healthy and unhampered being who, just as certain fishes color the water around them, seemed to affect the air in such a way that, coming near enough, you were forced to like her, without ceasing to think her the most impossible person that had ever found her way into cultivated society.

The carriage-wheels crunched gravel; the horses' hoofs rang on the pavement of a columned portico; the door was opened by a man in blue livery.

Entering the wide hall, they faced an ample double staircase, between the converging flights of which stood, closed, a great stately white-and-gold door.

Gerald, as bidden, followed the ladies up the stairs to the cozier sitting-room, where a fire, they hoped, had been kept up. In the beginning dimness of an early twilight he first saw the big red flowers and green, green leaves. He was left a moment alone while the ladies took off their hats, and he sent his eyes traveling around him, prepared really for something worse than they found, though the pictures on the wall called from him the gesture of trying to sweep away an unpleasant dream.

Aurora reappeared from her room in a business-like white ap.r.o.n.

"Now I'm going down to make the biscuit. Oh, no trouble. No trouble at all. I want them myself. I'm homesick for some food that tastes like home. Estelle will entertain you while I'm gone. I sha'n't be but a minute."