“Forgive me, Si’ora. Yes, yes, I know that you would not willingly injure me—but you might ruin my life by a careless speech. You have aroused my wife’s suspicions already—suspicious of she knows not what—vague jealousies that have made her unhappy. She could not understand your impulsive greeting; and I could not tell her how much you were my friend, without telling her the why and the wherefore. I am hemmed round with difficulty when I am questioned about you. If you were old and ugly it would be different—but I dare not avow my interest in a young and beautiful woman without revealing the claim she has upon my friendship—and in that claim lies the secret of my crime. Do you understand, Lisa?”
“Yes, I understand,” she answered moodily.
Her aunt lingered on the threshold of the door, the boy tugging at her skirts, and urging her to go out. Battersea Park was his favourite playground. He carried a wooden horse with a fine development of head, but with only a stick and a wheel to represent his body, which equine compromise he bestrode and galloped upon in the course of his airing. La Zia carried his pail and the shovel with which he was wont to scrape up the loose gravel in the roadway as blissfully as if he had been disporting himself beside the waves that roll gaily in to splash the children at play on the sands.
La Zia looked at her niece interrogatively, and the niece nodded “go,” whereupon aunt and boy vanished. She was always bidden to stop when Sefton was the visitor.
“You need not be frightened,” said Lisa. “We are not likely to meet again, as we met on the river. It was so long since I had seen you! I was taken by surprise, and forgot everything except that it was you, whom I thought I should never see again. I shall be wiser in future, now that I know more about you, and now that I have seen your wife.”
“That is my own good Lisa! She is a sweet wife, is she not? Worthy that a man should love her?”
“Yes, she is worthy; and she is fair and beautiful, like the Mary-lilies. I don’t wonder that you love her. And she has never done any evil thing in her life, has she? If a young man had said to her, ‘Come with me to Venice, and be my little wife,’ she would not have believed him, as I did. She would have said, ‘You must marry me first in the church.’ She would have believed in nothing but the church and the priest. She was not ignorant and poor, like me.”
“Lisa, do you suppose that I was making any unkind comparisons? I said only that she is worthy to be loved—that all men and women must love and honour her, and that her husband must needs adore her. And now, Si’ora, promise me that you will respect her jealousy, which is only the shadow cast by her love, and that you will do or say nothing that can make her unhappy.”
“I will do or say nothing to hurt you,” Lisa answered, somewhat sullenly. “She has little need to be unhappy, having all your love. But she is very sweet, as you say. She spoke to me graciously the other night, although she had a curious look, as if she were half afraid of me. Yes, she is beautiful. Did you know her and love her long before that day on the Lido, when you were so friendly with my aunt and me?”
“No, Si’ora.”
“What! your heart was free then?”
“Free as air.”
“And afterwards—when I saw you at the opera? When you came to our lodgings?”
“Ah, then I had seen her, I was captive. I loved her at first sight, but went about foolishly hiding my chains, trying not to love her. And now that we understand each other fully upon one point—now that I can trust my happiness in your hands, I want to talk to you about yourself, Lisa. I am not overfond of that Mr. Sefton with whom you are so friendly.”
“No more am I overfond of him. He is kind to us. He brings toys for Paolo; and he takes us on the river. He is the only friend little Zinco has allowed me to have.”
“He gives Paolo toys? And he gave you that diamond necklace, did he not?”
“Gave me my necklace! I should think not! Do you suppose I would be beholden to him, or to anyone? Do you know how many bracelets and brooches I have sent back to the fools who bought them for me? Diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires—all the colours of the rainbow. I just look at them and laugh, and carry them off to little Zinco, and he packs them up and sends them back to the giver, with his compliments, and his assurance that Signora Vivanti is not in the habit of accepting gifts. Mr. Sefton give me my necklace! Why, my necklace is my fortune!”
And then she told him how she and la Zia had scraped and saved, and lived upon pasta and Swiss cheese, in order to buy that necklace from Mr. Attenborough, who had allowed her to pay a considerable part of the price by weekly instalments. It was a bankrupt Contessa’s necklace—a Contessa who had run away from her husband.
“I am very glad to hear that,” said Vansittart. “I was afraid all was not well when I saw my little Si’ora blazing in diamonds.”
“Did they blaze?” she cried, delighted. “You thought that I was like some of the singers who spend all their salary on a carriage, and grand dinners, and fine silk gowns—a hundred pounds for a single gown! I
