"Well, it does seem a queer thing to do!--Go ahead, Hat; what was the compliment?"

"Sure, now, you've got one for me?"

"Sure."

"It was What's-his-name, the English fellow we see every time we go in to Cook's--Mr. Dysart. Leslie says he comes of a very good family. He said to me, 'How very charming Mrs. Hawthorne is looking this evening!'"

"Hattie, that man's a humbug, that man's leading a double life. He said to me, 'How very charming Miss Madison is looking this evening!' He did."

"Go 'way! You're making it up to save trouble."

"No, I ain't! Stop, Hattie! I know! I _am not_. Confusion upon it!

You've made me so nervous when I talk that I can't say ain't without jumping as if I'd sat on a pin!"

"Nell Goodwin, look me square in the eye. How many times did you say ain't at the party this evening?"

"Not once; I swear it. I was looking out every minute. 'I am not,' I said; 'We are not,' I said; 'He doesn't,' I said; 'He isn't,' I said.

There! Between you'n' I, Hat, it's a dreadful nuisance, keeping my mind on the way I talk. I hope I shall come in time to talking lofty without thinking about it. Why do I have to, Hat, after all? I've lived among educated people. Wasn't the Judge highly educated? And n.o.body ever found fault with my way of talking. My folks all had been to school and read books. And didn't I go to school till I was fourteen? And didn't I graduate from the grammar school with the rest? What's the matter with my natural way of talking?"

"It's all right at home, Nell, but it's different over here. They're a different kind of people we're thrown with."

"This pernickety way of talking never sounds cozy or friendly one bit.

We're as good as anybody, of course, but when I say 'I am not, he does not,' I always feel as if I were setting up to be better than the rest!--Oh, it isn't, is it? Oh, do you say so? 'Between you and I' isn't correct? But I thought you told me.... To Jericho, Hattie! How's a feller ever going to get to know?"

"Listen, Nell, while I go over it again. When you say----"

"Ah, no! Not at this time of night, Estelle! Let me live in ignorance till morning! You know all those sorts of things, my dear Estelle, because you're paid by the government to know them. I don't; but I know lots and lots of things that are a sight funnier."

She grabbed one of the pillows and flung it at her friend, who flung it back at her; and the simple creatures laughed.

Aurora re-tied in a bow the blue ribbon that closed the collar of her nightgown, and settled back again, with her arms out on the white satin quilt, flowered with roses and lined with blue. The two braids of her fair hair lay, one on each side, down her big, frank, undisguised bosom.

"You heaping dish of vanilla ice-cream!" said Hattie.

"You stick of rhubarb!" said Nell. "Stop, Hat! Behave! Do you suppose all the people we've invited to come and see us will come?"

"Doctor Chandler will come. And the Hunt girls will come. And Madame Bentivoglio I guess will come."

"Yes, and the Satterlees I'm sure will come. And Mrs. Seymour and her daughter that I said I'd help with the church fair. And the minister; what was it? Spottiswood."

"And won't the Mr. Hunt come that you seemed to be having such a good time with?"

"Yes, he'll come. He'll come to-morrow, I shouldn't wonder. Then that thinnish fellow with the hair like a hearth-brush--did you meet him? Mr.

Fane, a great friend of the Fosses. He's coming to take us sight-seeing." She yawned a wide, audible yawn. "I only hope there'll be some fun in it. Confound you, Hat, go to bed!"

CHAPTER V

After the Fosses had helped the lessees of the Haughty Hermitage to make it habitable; found for them a coachman who had a little French and, when told what they desired to buy, would take them to the proper shops; provided them with a butler to the same extent a linguist, through whom Estelle, who in Paris had ambitiously studied a manual of conversation, could give her orders, they not unnaturally became less generous of their company.

But they were not permitted to make the intervals long between visits.

The coachman wise in French was perpetually driving his spanking pair to their gates, delivering a message, and waiting to take them down for lunch or dinner with their joyfully welcoming and grateful friends. It was not at all unpleasant. It was not prized preciously,--there was too much of it and too urgently lavished,--but the lavishers were loved for it by two women neither dry-hearted nor world-hardened. Leslie fell into the way, when she was in town and had time, of running in to Aurora's, where it would be cheerful and she looked for a laugh.

Leslie, having reached, as she considered, years of discretion, thought fit to disregard the Florentine rule that young unmarried women must not walk in the streets unattended. She had balanced the two inconveniences: that of staying at home unless some one could go out with her, and that of being spoken to in the street, and decided that it was less unpleasant to hear a strange young man murmur as she pa.s.sed, "Angel of paradise!" or "Beautiful eyes!"--no grosser insult had ever been offered her,--than to be bothered by a servant at her heels. The fact that she looked American and was understood to be following the custom of her own country secured her against any real misinterpretation.

It was chilly, Novemberish, and within the doors of Florentine domiciles rather colder, for some reason, than in the open air. The Fosses kept their house at a more human temperature than most people, but yet after years of Italy did not heat very thoroughly: one drops into the way of doing as others do, and grows accustomed to putting up with cold in winter. Leslie often expressed the opinion that in America people really exaggerate in the matter of heating their houses. Nevertheless, just for the joy of the eyes and, through the eyes, of the depressed spirit, she was glad to-day of the big fire dancing and crackling in Aurora's chimney-place.

The upstairs sitting-room, where the ladies generally sat, might look rather like a day nursery; yet after one had accepted it, with its chintz of big red flowers and green foliage, its rich strawberry rug and new gold picture-frames, it did seem to brighten one's mood. How think grayly amid that dazzle and glow any more than feel cold before that fire?

Leslie held her hands to the blaze, and with an amiable display of interest inquired of their affairs, the progress made in "getting settled." There was still a good deal to do of a minor sort.

Accounts were given her in a merry duet; purchases were shown; she was told all that had happened since they last saw her, who had called, whom they had been to see.

Casting about in her mind for further things to communicate, Aurora was reminded of a small grievance.

"I thought your friend Mr. Fane was going to come and take us sight-seeing," she said.

"Was it so arranged?"

"So I supposed."

"And he hasn't been?"

"Hide nor hair of him have we seen."

"I meant, hasn't he perhaps called while you were out?"

"He hasn't."

"Strange. It's not like him to be rude. But, then, he's not like himself these days. You must excuse him."

"What's the matter with him? Isn't he well?"

"He's not ill in the usual sense. If he were, we should make him have a doctor and hope to see him cured. It's worse than an illness. He is blue--chronically blue."

"Why?"

"Oh, he has reasons. But the same reasons, of course, would not have made a person of a different temperament change as he has changed."

"I don't suppose you want to tell us what the reasons are?" Very tentatively this was said.

"Why ... ordinarily one would not feel free to do so, but you are sure to hear about it before you have been here long. In Florence, you know, everybody knows everything about everybody else. Not always the truth, but in any case an interesting version. Oh, it behooves one to be careful in Florence if one doesn't wish one's affairs known and talked about. But in the case of Gerald there was nothing secret. Everybody knows him, everybody knew when he was engaged to Violet Van Zandt, everybody knows that she married some one else."

"Oh, the poor boy!"

"It's very simple, you see, commonplace as possible. But it's like the old story of the poem: an old story, yet forever new. And the one to whom it happens has his heart broken, one way or the other."