“Why not the Dutch-African, or the Portuguese-African?” asked Sefton, when everybody had laughed at little Mr. Tivett’s gloomy outlook.
“Oh, the Anglo-Saxon race will prevail on the Dark Continent, just as they have prevailed in the East. Our future kings will style themselves Emperor of India and Africa. No other race can stand against us in the game of colonization. We have the courage which conquers, and the dogged patience which can keep what boldness has won.”
Mr. Tivett was not allowed to indulge in any further prophecies, for Sophy absorbed him in a discussion about the plays she ought to see, and the music she ought to hear while she was in town.
“You are too late for Sarasate,” he said tragically. “Last Saturday was his final performance. He leaves us in the flood-tide of the season, leaves us lamenting. But there are plenty of good things left. Clifford Harrison gives some of his delicious recitations next Saturday. Be sure you hear him. Hollmann and Wolff are to be heard almost daily. And then there is the opera three nights a week. I hope you have no horrid dinner-parties to prevent your enjoying yourself.”
“Only one this week, I am thankful to say,” said Sophy, who was dying to see what London dinners were like, and was deeply grateful to that one generous hostess who, hearing of her expected visit, had sent her a card for the stately feast to which the Vansittarts were bidden.
Eve had refused other dinner invitations during her sister’s visit. She made all engagements subservient to Sophy’s pleasure. Vansittart was not rich enough to give his wife an opera-box for the season, but he had taken a box for four evenings in the fortnight that Sophy was to spend in Charles Street, and four operas, with different sets of artists, for a young woman who had never heard an opera in her life, was an almost overpowering prospect. It needed all Sophy’s aplomb to talk of operas of which she only knew the overtures, and an occasional hackneyed scena, as if every page of the score were familiar to her; but Sophy was equal to the occasion, and discussed the merits of sopranos, tenors, and baritones with as critical an air as if her opinions were the growth of years of experience, rather than the result of a careful study of Truth and The World, sent her regularly by Eve, so soon as they had been read in Charles Street.
Sefton joined in the conversation between Sophy and Mr. Tivett, and had a good deal of advice to offer as to the things that were worthy of the young lady’s attention; the result of which advice appeared to be that there was really very little to be heard worth hearing, or to be seen worth seeing.
While tea and gossip occupied Eve and her friends in Charles Street, Vansittart had taken advantage of his wife’s “afternoon,” an occasion which he rarely honoured with his presence, and had driven to Chelsea to see Lisa and her aunt, and to impart that warning which he had resolved upon giving, at any hazard to himself. It was dangerous perhaps, in his position, to renew any relations with the Venetian; yet on the other hand it might be needful to assure himself of her loyalty, now that she had been brought suddenly into the foreground of his life, and might, at any hour, reveal his fatal secret to her from whom he would have it forever hidden.
All things considered, after two days and nights of anxious thought, it seemed to him best, for his own sake, as well as for Lisa’s, that he should have some serious talk with her.
He heard the prattle of the child as la Zia opened the door to him, and the mother’s voice telling him to be quiet. La Zia received him with open arms, and praised his kindness in coming to see them after such a long absence.
“If it had not been for the discovery that the rent was paid when we took our money to the agent on Our Lady’s Day, we should have thought you had forgotten us,” said la Zia.
She had her bonnet on, ready to take Paolo to Battersea Park, where she took him nearly every afternoon, while Lisa practised, or slept, or yawned over an English storybook. She would read nothing but English, in her determination to master that language; but history was too dull, novels were too long, and she cared only for short stories in which there was much sentimental lovemaking, generally by lords and ladies with high-sounding titles. These she read with rapture, picturing herself as the heroine, Vansittart as the highborn lover. She could not understand how so grand a gentleman could have missed a title. In Italy he would have been a Marquis or a Prince, she told herself.
She started up at the sound of his voice, and welcomed him joyously, pale but radiant.
“Why would you not come near me the other night?” she asked. “I was in your sister’s house—Mr. Sefton told me that the gracious lady is your sister—and you were there, and you hid yourself from me.”
“I was afraid, Si’ora,” he answered, coming to the point at once. “You know what lies between you and me—a secret the telling of which would blight my life—and you are so reckless, so impetuous. How could I tell what you might say?”
She looked at him with mournful reproachfulness.
“Do you know
