At last, however, she was there, and we at once saw that she was alone. She came on, breasting the hill with quick steps, and when she drew near we could see that there was a frown as of injured majesty on her brow. Mackinnon and his wife went forward to meet her. If she were really in trouble it would be fitting in some way to assist her; and of all women Mrs. Mackinnon was the last to see another woman suffer from ill-usage without attempting to aid her. “I certainly never liked her,” Mrs. Mackinnon said afterwards; “but I was bound to go and hear her tale, when she really had a tale to tell.”
And Mrs. Talboys now had a tale to tell—if she chose to tell it. The ladies of our party declared afterwards that she would have acted more wisely had she kept to herself both O’Brien’s words to her and her answer. “She was well able to take care of herself,” Mrs. Mackinnon said; “and, after all, the silly man had taken an answer when he got it.” Not, however, that O’Brien had taken his answer quite immediately, as far as I could understand from what we heard of the matter afterwards.
At the present moment Mrs. Talboys came up the rising ground all alone, and at a quick pace. “The man has insulted me,” she said aloud, as well as her panting breath would allow her, and as soon as she was near enough to Mrs. Mackinnon to speak to her.
“I am sorry for that,” said Mrs. Mackinnon. “I suppose he has taken a little too much wine.”
“No; it was a premeditated insult. The base-hearted churl has failed to understand the meaning of true, honest sympathy.”
“He will forget all about it when he is sober,” said Mackinnon, meaning to comfort her.
“What care I what he remembers or what he forgets!” she said, turning upon poor Mackinnon indignantly. “You men grovel so in your ideas—” “And yet,” as Mackinnon said afterwards, “she had been telling me that I was a fool for the last three weeks.”—“You men grovel so in your ideas, that you cannot understand the feelings of a truehearted woman. What can his forgetfulness or his remembrance be to me? Must not I remember this insult? Is it possible that I should forget it?”
Mr. and Mrs. Mackinnon only had gone forward to meet her; but, nevertheless, she spoke so loud that all heard her who were still clustered round the spot on which we had dined.
“What has become of Mr. O’Brien?” a lady whispered to me.
I had a field-glass with me, and, looking round, I saw his hat as he was walking inside the walls of the circus in the direction towards the city. “And very foolish he must feel,” said the lady.
“No doubt he is used to it,” said another.
“But considering her age, you know,” said the first, who might have been perhaps three years younger than Mrs. Talboys, and who was not herself averse to the excitement of a moderate flirtation. But then why should she have been averse, seeing that she had not as yet become subject to the will of any imperial lord?
“He would have felt much more foolish,” said the third, “if she had listened to what he said to her.”
“Well I don’t know,” said the second; “nobody would have known anything about it then, and in a few weeks they would have gradually become tired of each other in the ordinary way.”
But in the meantime Mrs. Talboys was among us. There had been no attempt at secrecy, and she was still loudly inveighing against the grovelling propensities of men. “That’s quite true, Mrs. Talboys,” said one of the elder ladies; “but then women are not always so careful as they should be. Of course I do not mean to say that there has been any fault on your part.”
“Fault on my part! Of course there has been fault on my part. No one can make any mistake without fault to some extent. I took him to be a man of sense, and he is a fool. Go to Naples indeed!”
“Did he want you to go to Naples?” asked Mrs. Mackinnon.
“Yes; that was what he suggested. We were to leave by the train for Civita Vecchia at six tomorrow morning, and catch the steamer which leaves Leghorn tonight. Don’t tell me of wine. He was prepared for it!” And she looked round about on us with an air of injured majesty in her face which was almost insupportable.
“I wonder whether he took the tickets overnight,” said Mackinnon.
“Naples!” she said, as though now speaking exclusively to herself, “the only ground in Italy which has as yet made no struggle on behalf of freedom;—a fitting residence for such a dastard!”
“You would have found it very pleasant at this season,” said the unmarried lady, who was three years her junior.
My wife had taken Ida out of the way when the first complaining note from Mrs. Talboys had been heard ascending the hill. But now, when matters began gradually to become quiescent, she brought her back, suggesting, as she did so, that they might begin to think of returning.
“It is getting very cold, Ida, dear, is it not?” said she.
“But where is
