"Oh, my good Kate, my sweet Kate, my incorrigible Kate, what an
extravagantly silly Kate you can be when the mood takes you,"
Beatrice laughed.
"Kate me as many Kates as you like, the man is really not
bad-looking. He has a nice lithe springy figure, and a clean
complexion, and an open brow. And if there's a suggestion of
superciliousness in the tilt of his nose, of scepticism in the
twirl of his moustaches, and of obstinacy in the squareness of
his chin--ma foi, you must take the bitter with the sweet.
Besides, he has decent hair, and plenty of it--he'll not go
bald. And he dresses well, and wears his clothes with an air.
In short, you'll make a very handsome couple. Anyhow, when
your family are gathered round the evening lamp to-night, I 'll
stake my fortune on it, but I can foretell the name of the book
they'll find Trixie Belfont reading," laughed Mrs. O'Donovan
Florence.
For a few minutes, after her friend had left her, Beatrice sat
still, her head resting on her hand, and gazed with fixed eyes
at Monte Sfiorito. Then she rose, and walked briskly backwards
and forwards, for a while, up and down the terrace. Presently
she came to a standstill, and leaning on the balustrade, while
one of her feet kept lightly tapping the pavement, looked off
again towards the mountain.
The prospect was well worth her attention, with its blue and
green and gold, its wood and water, its misty-blushing snows,
its spaciousness and its atmosphere. In the sky a million
fluffy little cloudlets floated like a flock of fantastic
birds, with mother-of-pearl tinted plumage. The shadows were
lengthening now. The sunshine glanced from the smooth surface
of the lake as from burnished metal, and falling on the
coloured sails of the fishing-boats, made them gleam like sails
of crimson silk. But I wonder how much of this Beatrice really
saw.
She plucked an oleander from one of the tall marble urns set
along the balustrade, and pressed the pink blossom against her
face, and, closing her eyes, breathed in its perfume; then,
absent-minded, she let it drop, over the terrace, upon the path
below.
"It's impossible," she said suddenly, aloud. At last she went
into the house, and up to her rose-and-white retiring-room.
There she took a book from the table, and sank into a deep
easy-chair, and began to turn the pages.
But when, by and by, approaching footsteps became audible in
the stone-floored corridor without, Beatrice hastily shut the
book, thrust it back upon the table, and caught up another so
that Emilia Manfredi, entering, found her reading Monsieur
Anatole France's "Etui de nacre."