“I am turning out a terrible tea toper,” said Colville, stirring his cup in front of the old lady whom his relations to the ladies at Palazzo Pinti had interested so much. “I don’t think I drink less than ten cups a day; seventy cups a week is a low average for me. I’m really beginning to look down at my boots a little anxiously.”
Mrs. Amsden laughed. She had not been in America for forty years, but she liked the American way of talking better than any other. “Oh, didn’t you hear about Inglehart when he was here? He was so good-natured that he used to drink all the tea people offered him, and then the young ladies made tea for him in his studio when they went to look at his pictures. It almost killed him. By the time spring came he trembled so that the brush flew out of his hands when he took it up. He had to hurry off to Venice to save his life. It’s just as bad at the Italian houses; they’ve learned to like tea.”
“When I was here before, they never offered you anything but coffee,” said Colville. “They took tea for medicine, and there was an old joke that I thought I should die of, I heard it so often about the Italian that said to the English woman when she offered him tea, ‘Grazie; sto bene.’ ”
“Oh, that’s all changed now.”
“Yes; I’ve seen the tea, and I haven’t heard the joke.”
The flavour of Colville’s talk apparently encouraged his companion to believe that he would like to make fun of their host’s paintings with her; but whether he liked them, or whether he was principled against that sort of return for hospitality, he chose to reply seriously to some ironical lures she threw out.
“Oh, if you’re going to be good,” she exclaimed, “I shall have nothing more to say to you. Here comes Mr. Thurston; I can make him abuse the pictures. There! You had better go away to a young lady I see alone over yonder, though I don’t know what you will do with one alone.” She laughed and shook her head in a way that had once been arch and lively, but that was now puckery and infirm—it is affecting to see these things in women—and welcomed the old gentleman who came up and superseded Colville.
The latter turned, with his cup still in his hand, and wandered about through the company, hoping he might see Mrs. Bowen among the groups peering at the pictures or solidly blocking the view in front of them. He did not find her, but he found Imogene Graham standing somewhat apart near a window. He saw her face light up at sight of him, and then darken again as he approached.
“Isn’t this rather an unnatural state of things?” he asked when he had come up. “I ought to be obliged to fight my way to you through successive phalanxes of young men crowding round with cups of tea outstretched in their imploring hands. Have you had some tea?”
“Thank you, no; I don’t wish any,” said the young girl, so coldly that he could not help noticing, though commonly he was man enough to notice very few things.
“How is Effie today?” he asked quickly.
“Oh, quite well,” said Imogene.
“I don’t see Mrs. Bowen,” he ventured further.
“No,” answered the girl, still very lifelessly; “I came with Mrs. Fleming.” She looked about the room as if not to look at him.
He now perceived a distinct intention to snub him. He smiled. “Have you seen the pictures? There are two or three really lovely ones.”
“Mrs. Fleming will be here in a moment, I suppose,” said Imogene evasively, but not with all her first coldness.
“Let us steal a march on her,” said Colville briskly. “When she comes you can tell her that I showed you the pictures.”
“I don’t know,” faltered the girl.
“Perhaps it isn’t necessary you should,” he suggested.
She glanced at him with questioning trepidation.
“The respective duties of chaperone and protégée are rather undefined. Where the chaperone isn’t there to command, the protégée isn’t there to obey. I suppose you’d know if you were at home?”
“Oh yes!”
“Let me imagine myself at a loan exhibition in Buffalo. Ah! that appeal is irresistible. You’ll come, I see.”
She hesitated; she looked at the nearest picture, then followed him to another. He now did what he had refused to do for the old lady who tempted him to it; he made fun of the pictures a little, but so amiably and with so much justice to their good points that the painter himself would not have minded his jesting. From time to time he made Imogene smile, but in her eyes lurked a look of uneasiness, and her manner expressed a struggle against his
