Corbario was not pleased with the account given by Settimia in the
letter she wrote him after reaching Pontresina with Regina and Marcello,
who had chosen the Engadine as the coolest place he could think of in
which to spend the hot months, and had preferred Pontresina to Saint
Moritz as being quieter and less fashionable. Settimia wrote that the
dear patient had looked better the very day after arriving; that the
admirable companion was making him drink milk and go to bed at ten
o'clock; that the two spent most of the day in the pine-woods, and that
Marcello already talked of an excursion up the glacier and of climbing
some of the smaller peaks. If the improvement continued, Settimia wrote,
it was extremely likely that the dear patient would soon be better than
he had ever been in his life.
Folco destroyed the letter, lit a cigarette, and thought the matter
over. He had deemed it wise to pretend assent when the Contessa had
urged him to join Marcello at once, but he had not had the least
intention of doing so, and had come back to Paris as soon as he was sure
that the Contessa was gone. But he had made a mistake in his
calculations. He had counted on Regina for the love of excitement,
display, and inane dissipation which women in her position very often
develop when they find that a man will give them anything they like; and
he had counted very little on her love for Marcello. Folco was still
young enough to fall into one of the most common errors of youth, which
is to believe most people worse than they are. Villains, as they grow
older, learn that unselfish devotion is more common than they had
thought, and that many persons habitually speak the truth, for
conscience' sake; finding this out, villains have been known to turn
into good men in their riper years, and have sometimes been almost
saints in their old age. Corbario smoked his cigarette and mentally
registered his mistake, and it is to be feared that the humiliation he
felt at having made it was much more painful than the recollection of
having dropped one deadly tablet into a little bottle that contained
many harmless ones. He compared it in his mind to the keen
disappointment he had felt when he had gone down to hide Marcello's
body, and had discovered that he had failed to kill him. It is true that
what he had felt then had been accompanied by the most awful terror he
could imagine, but he distinguished clearly between the one sensation
and the other. There was nothing to fear now; he had simply lost time,
but that was bad enough, since it was due to his own stupidity.
He thought over the situation carefully and considered how much it would
be wise to risk. Another year of the life Marcello had been leading in
Paris would have killed him to a certainty; perhaps six months would
have done it. But a summer spent at Pontresina, living as it was clear
that Regina meant him to live, would give the boy strength enough to
last much longer, and might perhaps bring him out of all danger.
Corbario considered what might be done, went over many plans in his
mind, compared many schemes, for the execution of some of which he might
have paid dearly; and in the end he was dissatisfied with all, and began
over again. Still he reached no conclusion, and he attributed the fault
to his own dulness, and his dulness to the life he had been leading of
late, which was very much that which he wished Marcello to lead. But he
had always trusted his nerves, his ingenuity, and his constitution; if
one of the three were to fail him, now that he was rich, it was better
that it should be his ingenuity.
He made up his mind to go to the Engadine and see for himself how
matters looked. He could stay at Saint Moritz, or even Samaden, so as
not to disturb Marcello's idyl, and Marcello could come down alone to
see him. He should probably meet acquaintances, and would give them to
understand that he had come in order to get rid of Regina and save his
stepson from certain destruction. Society was very lenient to young men
as rich as Marcello, he reflected, but was inclined to lay all the blame
of their doings on their natural guardians. There was no reason why
Corbario should expose himself to such criticism, and he was sure that
the Contessa had only said what many people clearly thought, namely,
that he was allowing Marcello far too much liberty. The world should see
that he was doing his duty by the boy.
He left Paris with regret, as he always did, after writing to Marcello
twenty-four hours beforehand. He wrote at the same time to Settimia.
"Folco will be here to-morrow," Marcello said, as he and Regina sat
under the pine-trees beyond the stream, a little way above the town.
Regina sat leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Marcello lay on his
side, resting on his elbow and looking up to her. He saw her face
change.
"Why should he come here?" she asked. "We are so happy!"
"He will not disturb us," Marcello answered. "He will stop at Saint
Moritz. I shall go down to see him there. I am very fond of him, you
know, and we have not seen each other for at least two months. I shall
be very glad to see him."
The colour was sinking in Regina's face, and her eyelids were almost
closed.
"You are the master," she said quietly enough. "You will do as you
will."
He was surprised, and he felt a little resentment at her tone. He liked
her better when she dominated him, as on that night in Paris when she
had made him promise to come away, and had refused to let him drink more
wine, and had sent him to bed like a child. Now she spoke as her
forefathers, serfs born to the plough and bound to the soil, must have
spoken to their lords and owners. There was no ancient aristocratic
blood in his own veins; he was simply a middle-class Italian gentleman
who chanced to be counted with the higher class because he had been born
very rich, had been brought up by a lady, and had been more or less well
educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should
call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal,
but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often
wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that
he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well
born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his
hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day. He
could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious
that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not
face the problem of the future.
He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her
eyes.
"Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?" he asked
after a while.
"He comes to take you away from me," she answered, without moving.
"That is absurd!" cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.
"No. It is true. I know it."
"You are unreasonable. He is the best friend I have in the world. Do you
expect me to promise that I will never see him again?"
"You are the master."
She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not
change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping
his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already
coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.
"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It
was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged
everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make
you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been
together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go
down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."
"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone
which he could not understand.
"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"
Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's
long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which
had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the
hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing
fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It
had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would
have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a
mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her
when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they
love called back from almost certain death.
"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his
blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the
beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely
pine-woods.
She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the
quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth
pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.
"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.
The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving
itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and
threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and
looking down at the brown pine-needles.
"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you
should dislike him."
"I will tell you something," Regina answered. "When you are tired of me,
you shall send me away. You shall throw me away like an old coat."
"You are always saying that!" returned Marcello, displeased. "You know
very well that I shall never be tired of you. Why do you say it?"
"Because I shall not complain. I shall not cry, and throw myself on my
knees, and say, 'For the love of heaven, take me back!' I am not made
like that. I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be.
That is all. Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you
have no more love. Why should I ask you for what you have not? That
would be like asking charity of the poor. It would be foolish. But I
shall tell you something else."
"What?" asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had
finished her long speech.
"If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be
an evil day for him. He shall wish that he had not been born into this
world."
"You need not fear," Marcello said. "No one shall come between us."
"Well, I have spoken. It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario
or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he
comes. In that way he will know."
She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any
dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before,
and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that
she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive
peasant's speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible
compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned
tolerably well from him.
After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual,
and the day went by as other days had gone.
On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a
note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.
Regina was left alone for a few hours, and she went out with the idea of
taking a long walk by herself. It would be a relief and almost a
pleasure to walk ten miles in the clear air, breathing the perfume of
the pines and listening to the roar of the torrent. Marcello could not
walk far without being tired, and she never thought of herself when he
was with her; but when she was alone a great longing sometimes came over
her to feel the weight of a conca full of water on her head, to roll up
her sleeves and scrub the floors, to carry burdens and work with her
hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the
certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had
grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had
almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.
But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed
place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure
that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression
would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that
by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much.
Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be
intolerable to sit still and think of it.
She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not
even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at
her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation
of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in
Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him
and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the CafÈ Anglais, to be an
object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had
duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and
the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her,
while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up
their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with
shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved
by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young
Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with
their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about
when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the
only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went
sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades
in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he
was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The
Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her
wickedness, but the hotel-keepers heard of his intention and
unanimously requested him to let her alone, which, he did, reluctantly
yielding to arguments which shall remain a secret. A certain Archduchess
who was at Saint Moritz and was curious to see her adopted the simple
plan of asking her to tea without knowing her, at which Marcello was
furious; a semi-imperial Russian personage unblushingly scraped
acquaintance with Marcello and was extremely bland for a few days, in
the hope of being introduced to Regina. When he found that this was
impossible, he went away, not in the least disconcerted, and he was
heard to say that the girl "would go far."
Regina would have been blind if she had not been aware that she
attracted all this attention, and as she was probably not intended by
nature for a saint, she would have been pleased by it if there had been
room in her thoughts for any one but Marcello--even for herself.
She walked far up the road, and after the first mile or two she met no
one. At that hour the people who made excursions were already far away,
and those who meant to do nothing stayed nearer to Pontresina. She grew
tired of the road after a time. It led straight to the foot of the
glacier, and she was not attracted by snow and ice as northern people
are; there was something repellent to her in the thought of the
bleakness and cold, and the sunshine itself looked as hard as the
distant peaks on which it fell. But on the right there were rocky spurs
of the mountains, half covered with short trees and brilliant with wild
flowers that grew in little natural gardens here and there, not far
below the level of perpetual snow. She left the road, and began to climb
where there was no path. The air was delicious with the scent of flowers
and shrubs; there were alp-roses everywhere, and purple gentian, and the
little iva blossom that has an aromatic smell, and on tiny moss ledges
the cold white stars of the edelweiss seemed to be keeping themselves as
far above reach as they could. But she climbed as lightly as a savage
woman, and picked them and sat down to look at them in the sunshine.
Just beyond where she rested, the rock narrowed suddenly to a steep
pass, within which were dark shadows. People who do not attempt anything
in the way of ascending peaks often wander in that direction in search
of edelweiss, but Regina fancied that she was sure to be alone as long
as she pleased to stay.
If she had not been sure of that she would not have taken off her left
shoe to shake out some tiny thing that had got into it and that annoyed
her. It turned out to be a bit of pine-needle. It was pleasant to feel
her foot freed from the hot leather and resting on the thick moss, and
so the other shoe came off too, and was turned upside down and shaken,
as an excuse, for there was nothing in it, and both feet rested in the
moss, side by side. She wished she could take off her stockings, and if
there had been a stream she would have done it, so sure was she that no
one would disturb her, up there amongst the rocks and ever so far from
Pontresina. It would have been delightful to paddle in the cold running
water, for it was much hotter than she had ever supposed that it could
be in such a place.
She took off her straw hat, and fanned herself gently with it, letting
the sunshine fall full upon her thick black hair. She had never owned a
hat in her life till she had been installed in the little house in
Trastevere, and she hated the inconvenient things. What was her hair
for, if it could not protect her head? But a straw hat made a very good
fan. The air was hot and still, and there were none of those thousand
little sounds which she would have heard in the chestnut woods above
Frascati.
A little cry broke the silence, and she turned her head in the direction
whence it came. Then she dropped her hat, sprang to her feet, and ran
forwards, forgetting that she had no shoes on. She saw a figure clinging
to the rocks, where they suddenly narrowed, and she heard the cry again,
desperate with fear and weak with effort. A young girl had evidently
been trying to climb down, when she had lost her footing, and had only
been saved from a bad fall because her grey woollen frock had caught her
upon a projecting point of granite, giving her time to snatch at the
strong twigs of some alp-roses, and to find a very slight projection on
which she could rest the toe of one shoe. She was hanging there with her
face to the rock, eight or ten feet from the ground, which was strewn
with big stones, and she was in such a position that she seemed unable
to turn her head in order to look down.
In ten seconds Regina was standing directly below the terrified girl,
raising herself on tiptoe, and trying to reach her feet with her hands,
to guide them to a hold; but she could not.
"Don't be frightened," Regina said in Italian, which was the only
language she knew.
"I cannot hold on!" answered the girl, trying to look down, but feeling
that her foot would slip if she turned her head far enough.
"Yes, you can," Regina replied, too much roused to be surprised that the
answer had come in her own language. "Your dress will hold you, even if
you let go with your hands. It is new and it is strong, and it is fairly
caught on the rock. I can see that."
"But I can't hang here until you go and get help," cried the girl, not
much reassured.
"I am going to climb to the top by an easier way and pull you up again,"
Regina answered. "Then we can get down together."
While Regina was speaking she had already begun the ascent, which was
easy enough for her, at the point she had chosen, though many an Alpine
climber might have envied the quickness and sureness of her hold with
feet and hands. She realised that she had forgotten her shoes now, and
was glad that she had taken them off.
"One minute more!" she cried in an encouraging tone, when she had almost
reached the top.
"Quick!" came the imploring answer.
Then Regina was lying flat on the ledge above the girl, stretching both
hands down and catching the slender white wrists with a hold like
steel. And then, feeling herself held and safe to move, the girl looked
up, and Regina was looking into Aurora's face below her. For one instant
the two did not recognise each other, for they had only seen each other
once, by night, under the portico of the ThÈ‚tre FranÁais. But an
instant later a flush of anger rose to Aurora's forehead, and the dark
woman turned pale, and her brows were suddenly level and stern. They
hated each other, as the one hung there held by the other's hands, and
the black eyes gazed savagely into the angry blue ones. Aurora was not
frightened any longer; she was angry because she was in Regina's power.
The strong woman could save her if she would, and Aurora would despise
herself ever afterwards for having been saved by her. Or the strong
woman could let her fall, and she would probably be maimed for life if
she were not killed outright. That seemed almost better. She had never
understood before what it could mean to be altogether in the power of an
enemy.
Regina meant to save her; that was clear. With quick, commanding words
she told her what to do.
"Set your knees against the rock and pull yourself up a little by my
hands. So! I can pull you higher now. Get one knee well on that ledge.
Now I will hold your left hand with both mine while you disentangle your
frock from the point. Now put your right hand round my neck while I
raise myself a little. Yes, that way. Now, hold on tight!"
Regina made a steady effort, lifting fully half Aurora's weight with
her, as she got first upon one knee and then upon both.
[Illustration: "REGINA MADE A STEADY EFFORT, LIFTING FULLY HALF AURORA'S
WEIGHT WITH HER."]
"There! Take breath and then scramble over the edge," she said.
A few seconds, another effort, and Aurora sank exhausted beside Regina,
half sitting, half lying, and resting on one hand.
She looked up sideways at the dark woman's face; for Regina stood
upright, gazing down into the valley. Aurora turned her eyes away, and
then looked up again; she had recovered her breath now.
"Thank you," she said, with an effort.
"It is nothing," Regina answered in an indifferent tone, and without so
much as moving her head; she was no more out of breath than if she had
been sitting still.
The fair girl hated her at that moment as she had never hated any one in
her short life, nor had ever dreamed of hating. The flush of anger rose
again and again to her forehead, to the very roots of her auburn hair,
and lingered a second and sank again. Regina stood perfectly motionless,
her face as unchanging as marble.
Aurora rose to her feet, and leaned against the rock. She had suddenly
felt herself at a disadvantage in remaining seated on the ground while
her adversary was standing. It was the instinct of the animal that
expects to be attacked. When two people who hate each other or love each
other very much meet without warning in a very lonely place, the fierce
old passions of the stone age may take hold of them and sway them, even
nowadays.
For a time that seemed long, there was silence; without words each knew
that the other had recognised her. The peasant woman spoke first, though
with an evident effort, and without turning her eyes.
"When you are rested, we will go down," she said.
Aurora moved a step towards the side on which Regina had climbed up.
"I think I can get down alone," she answered coldly.
Regina looked at her and laughed with a little contempt.
"You will break your neck if you try," she said. "You cannot climb at
all!"
"I think I can get down," Aurora repeated.
She went to the edge and was going to begin the attempt when Regina
seized her by the wrist and dragged her back in spite of her resistance.
"I have something to tell you first," Regina said. "Afterwards I will
take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely
and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."
"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt
her and humiliated her.
"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am
Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met.
Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is
long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say
now, and then we will part."
"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a
little.
"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it
is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other
here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I
wished to."
"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.
"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the
satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go
to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will
not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I
would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would
not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because
he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."
Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She
was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was
quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman
peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.
"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"
"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and
yet half sad.
"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for
you."
Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.
"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He
loved you once."
She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to
her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is
not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.
"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to
her mother more than two years earlier.
She was almost as pale as Regina now, for the thrust had been straight
and sure, and right at her heart. But she was prouder than the peasant
woman who had wounded her.
"I have heard that you saved his life," she said presently. "And he
loves you. You are happy!"
"I should always be happy if he and I were alone in the world," Regina
answered, for she was a little softened by the girl's tone. "But even
now they are trying to part us."
"To part you?" Again Aurora looked up suddenly. "Who is trying to do
that? A woman?"
Regina laughed a little.
"You are jealous," she said. "That shows that you love him still. No. It
is not a woman."
"Corbario?" The name rose instinctively to Aurora's lips.
"Yes," Regina answered. "That is why I am left alone this morning.
Signor Corbario is at Saint Moritz and Marcello is gone down to see him.
I know he is trying to separate us. You did not know that he was so
near?"
"We only came yesterday afternoon," Aurora answered. "We did not know
that--that Signor Consalvi was here, or we should not have come at all."
It had stung her to hear Regina speak of him quite naturally by his
first name. Regina felt the rebuke.
"I am truly sorry that I should have accidentally found myself in your
path," she said, emphasising the rather grand phrase, and holding her
handsome head very high.
Aurora almost smiled at this sudden manifestation of the peasant's
nature, and wondered whether Regina ever said such things to Marcello,
and whether, if she did, they jarred on him very much. The speech had
the very curious effect of restoring Aurora's sense of superiority, and
she answered more kindly.
"You need not be sorry," she said. "If you had not chanced to be here I
should probably be lying amongst the rocks down there with several
broken bones."
"If it were not by my fault I should not care," Regina retorted, with
elementary frankness.
"But I should!" Aurora laughed, in spite of herself, and liking this
phase of Regina's character better than any she had yet seen. "Come,"
she said, with a sudden generous impulse, and holding out her hand,
"let us stop quarrelling. You saved me from a bad accident, and I was
too ungenerous to be grateful. I thank you now, with all my heart."
Regina was surprised and stared hard at her for a moment, and then
glanced at her outstretched hand.
"You would not take my hand if there were any one here to see."
"Why not?"
"Because they have told you that I am a wicked woman," Regina answered,
a slight blush rising in her cheeks. "And perhaps it is true. But it was
for him."
"I would take your hand anywhere, because you saved his life," said
Aurora, and her voice shook a little as she said the last words. "And
besides, no one has told me that you are wicked. Come, what is the use
of hating each other?"
Regina took her hand reluctantly, but not suspiciously, and held it a
moment.
"It does not mean that I shall not hate you if he ever loves you again,"
she said. "If I made you think that it would be treachery, and that is
the worst sin."
"It only means that I thank you now, quite honestly," Aurora answered,
and their hands parted.
"Very well." Regina seemed satisfied. "And I thank you for taking my
hand," she added, with something oddly like real gratitude, "and because
you said you would do it anywhere, even before other women. I know what
I am, and what people call me. But it was for him. Let us not talk of
it any more. I will help you down, and you shall go home alone."
"My mother is waiting for me far down, towards the village," Aurora
said.
"All the better. A young lady like you should not go about without any
one. It is not proper."
Aurora suppressed a smile at the thought of being reproved concerning
the proprieties by "Marcello's Regina," and she began the descent.
Regina went down first, facing the rock, and planting the young girl's
feet in the best stepping places, one after the other, with constant
warnings and instructions as to holding on with her hands. They reached
the bottom in safety, and came to the place where Regina had left her
hat and shoes. She sat down where she had been sitting when she had
first heard the cry, and began to put them on.
"I had taken them off for coolness as I sat here," she explained. "You
see, until I was fourteen I only wore them on Sundays."
"And yet you have such beautiful feet," Aurora said.
"Have I?" Regina asked indifferently. "I thought all feet were alike.
But I have torn my stocking--it is hard to get the shoe on."
"Let me help you." Aurora knelt down quickly, and began to loosen the
lacing further, but Regina protested, flushing deeply and trying to draw
her foot back.
"No, no!" she cried. "You are a lady!"
"What difference does that make?" asked Aurora, laughing and insisting.
"This is not right!" Regina still protested, and the blush had not left
her cheeks.
But Aurora smoothed the torn stocking under the sole of each foot, and
slipped on the shoes, which were by no means tight, and tied the lacing
fast.
"Thank you, Signorina," Regina said, much confused. "You are too good!"
She picked up her hat and put it on, but she was not clever with the
pin, for she was used to having Settimia do everything for her which she
had not learned to do for herself before she had come to Rome.
"I can never manage it without Settimia," she said, as if excusing
herself for her awkwardness, as she again submitted to Aurora's help.
"Settimia?" repeated the young girl, as she put the hat on and thrust a
long pin through it. "Who is Settimia?"
"Our--I mean my maid," Regina explained. "Thank you. You are too good!"
"It is an uncommon name," Aurora said, looking critically at the hat.
"But I think I have heard it before."
"She is a wonderful woman. She knows French. She knows everything!"
Aurora said nothing to this, but seemed to be trying to recall something
she had long forgotten. Regina was very busy in her turn, pulling down
the girl's frock all round, and brushing it with her hand as well as
she could, and picking off bits of dry grass and thistles that clung to
the grey woollen. Aurora thanked her.
"The way down is very easy now," Regina said. "A few steps farther on we
can see the road."
"After all, why should you not come with me till we find my mother?"
Aurora asked.
"No," Regina answered with quiet decision. "I am what I am. You must not
be seen with Regina. Do not tell your mother that you have been with me,
and I shall not tell Marcello--I mean, Signor Consalvi."
"Why not?"
"Neither of them would be pleased. Trust me. I know the world. Good-bye,
and the Madonna accompany you; and remember what I said when I took your
hand."
So they parted, and Regina stood up a long time, and watched the slender
grey figure descending to the road in the valley.