Lisa had a strong will, and a wonderful power of self-command when she really wanted to command herself; so she dried her tears, ate British beef, almost raw, and drank British stout; and under this regime her nerves speedily recovered from the rude shaking which passion had given them, and when the good little cello player came to give her the Saturday lesson, her voice rang out sound as a bell, and B natural was produced with perfect ease—a round and perfect note.
“We’ll wait till next Tuesday for the C,” said Zinco, “and we won’t try ‘Roberto’ for a week or so. Stick to the Solfeggi.”
“And I have not lost my voice, caro?”
“No more than I have lost a thousand pounds, poveretta.”
After this things went smoothly. Life seemed very dreary to Fiordelisa without the friend whose rare visits had been her delight; but her mind was braced and fortified by a steady purpose. She meant to win the great British public; and behind that indefinite monster there shone the image of the man she loved. He would go to the theatre where she sang. He would see her, and understand at last that she was beautiful and gifted, and worthy to be loved.
“And then he knows that I love him with all the strength of my heart,” she said to herself. “That ought to count for something. Yet when I told him of my love he shrank from me, as if he hated me for loving him. That is his cold English nature, perhaps. An Englishman does not like unasked love.”
Lisa was two years older than in that day of despair, and Zinco’s promises had been realized. She had the town at her feet; and if the coronet matrimonial had not yet been laid there she had received plenty of that adulation and of those advances which cannot be accepted without peril. All such advances Lisa had repulsed with a splendid scorn. Carriages, servants, West End apartments, and St. John’s Wood villas had been offered her; but she still rode in penny omnibuses or twopenny steamers, or trudged valiantly in cheap shoes. She might have had an open account with any silk mercer in London. She might have had her frocks made by the dressmaker on the crest of fashion’s changeful wave—but she was content to wear a black stuff gown, with a bit of bright ribbon tied round her neck, and another bit twisted in her hair. When she wanted to look her best she put on her bead necklace—one of those necklaces which the man she loved bought for her in the Procuratie Vecchie on that fatal night. The idea that he had bought the murderous dagger at the same shop in no wise lessened her pleasure in these gifts of his.
Among her numerous admirers one only had been received by the lady and her aunt, and that was Wilfred Sefton, who had contrived to establish a footing in the Signora’s drawing-room before Zinco could protest against his admission. He had so managed as to be regarded as a friend by both aunt and niece, and the boy, whom he detested, had grown odiously fond of him. He had known Lisa for a year and a half, had seen her often, had spent long summer days in her company, and in all that time he had never addressed her as a lover. He knew, too well, from many a subtle sign and token, that his going or coming affected her not at all; that she liked him and welcomed him only because his presence and his attentions made a pleasant variety in the dullness of her domestic life. He knew this. He knew that whatever she might have been in the past, she was a virtuous woman in the present, that she courted no man’s admiration, and was tempted by no man’s gold. Convinced of this, finding her as remote in her quiet indifference as if she had been some young patrician pacing her ancestral park in maiden meditation, fancy free, his desire to win her intensified until she seemed to him the only woman in the world worth winning. Had she been easily won he might have been tired of her before now. His grandes passions in the past had been of short duration. Unspeakable weariness had descended upon him as a blight; the loathing of life and all it could yield him. Lisa’s indifference gave a piquancy to their relations. He told himself that he could afford to bide his time. He had done a good deal of mischief in the world; but he was not a vulgar profligate. His love was an unscrupulous but not a vulgar love.
The white kitten, a thoroughbred Persian, and a gift from Mrs. Hawberk, had grown into a great white cat, stolid, beautiful, resentful of strange caresses, but devotedly attached to Lisa and
