Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories

"Since when have you become so historical? They were a wicked race."

"And since when have you become so virtuous?" she answered. "They were at least successful."

Time passed. It has a way of passing rapidly in Florence; although each day is long and slow and full and delightful, a month flies. Again the season was waning. It was now believed that Mr. Morgan had been successful, although nothing definite was known. It was remarked how unusually well Miss Stowe looked: her eyes were so bright and she had so much color that she really looked brilliant. Madame Ferri repeated this to Miss Harrison.

"Margaret was always brilliant," said her aunt.

"Oh, extremely!" said Madame Ferri.

"Only people never found it out," added Miss Harrison.

She herself maintained a calm and uninquiring demeanor. Sometimes she was with her niece and her niece's supposed suitor, and sometimes not. She continued to receive him with the same affability which she had bestowed upon him from the first, and occasionally she invited him to dinner and to drive. She made no comment upon the frequency of his visits, or the length of his conversations upon the little balcony in the evening, where the plash of the fountain came faintly up from below. In truth she had no cause for solicitude; nothing could be more tranquil than the tone of the two talkers. Nothing more was said about Mrs. Lovell; conversation had sunk back into the old impersonal channel.

"You are very even," Morgan said one evening. "You do not seem to have any moods. I noticed it last year."

"One is even," she replied, "when one is – "

"Indifferent," he suggested.

She did not contradict him.

Two things she refused to do: she would not sing, and she would not go to the Boboli Garden.

"As I am especially fond of those tall, ceremonious old hedges and serene statues, you cut me off from a real pleasure," said Morgan.

It was on the evening of the 16th of May; they were sitting by the open window; Miss Harrison was not present.

"You can go there after we have gone," she said, smiling. "We leave to-morrow."

"You leave to-morrow!" he repeated. Then, after an instant, "It is immensely kind to tell me beforehand," he said, ironically. "I should have thought you would have left it until after your departure!"

She made no reply, but fanned herself slowly with the beautiful gray fan.

"I suppose you consider that the month is more than ended, and that you are free?"

"You have had all you asked for, Mr. Morgan."

"And therefore I have now only to thank you for your generosity, and let you go."

"I think so."

"You do not care to know the result of my experiment – whether it has been a failure or a success?" he said. "You told me the result of yours."

"I did not mean to tell you. It was forced from me by your misunderstanding."

"Misunderstandings, because so slight that one cannot attack them, are horrible things. Let there be none between us now."

"There is none."

"I do not know." He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the soft darkness of the Italian night. "I have one more favor to ask," he said, presently. "You have granted me many; grant me this. At what hour do you go to-morrow?"

"In the afternoon."

"Give me a little time with you in the Boboli Garden in the morning."

"You are an accomplished workman, Mr. Morgan; you want to finish with a polish; you do not like to leave rough ends. Be content; I will accept the intention as carried out, and suppose that all the last words have been beautifully and shiningly spoken. That will do quite as well."

"Put any construction upon it you please," he answered. "But consent."

But it was with great difficulty that he obtained that consent.

"There is really nothing you can say that I care to hear," she declared, at last.

"The king is dead! My time is ended, evidently! But, as there is something you can say which I care to hear, I again urge you to consent."

Miss Stowe rose, and passed through the long window into the lighted empty room, decked as usual with many flowers; here she stood, looking at him, as he entered also.

"I have tried my best to prevent it," she said.

"You have."

"And you still insist?"

"I do."

"Very well; I consent. But you will not forget that I tried," she said. "Good-night."

The next morning at ten, as he entered the old amphitheatre, he saw her; she was sitting on one of the upper stone seats, under a statue of Diana.

"I would rather go to our old place," he said, as he came up; "the seat under the tree, you know."

"I like this better."

"As you prefer, of course. It will be more royal, more in state; but, to be in accordance with it, you should have been clothed in something majestic, instead of that soft, yielding hue."

"That is hardly necessary," she answered.

"By which you mean, I suppose, that your face is not yielding. And indeed it is not."

She was dressed in cream color from head to foot; she held open, poised on one shoulder, a large, heavily fringed, cream-colored parasol. Above this soft drapery and under this soft shade the darkness of her hair and eyes was doubly apparent.

He took a seat beside her, removed his hat, and let the breeze play over his head and face; it was a warm summer morning, and they were in the shadow.

"I believe I was to tell you the result of my experiment," he said, after a while, breaking the silence which she did not break.

"You wished it; I did not ask it."

If she was cool, he was calm; he was not at all as he had been the night before; then he had seemed hurried and irritated, now he was quiet. "The experiment has succeeded," he said, deliberately. "I find myself often thinking of you; I like to be with you; I feel when with you a sort of satisfied content. What I want to ask is – I may as well say it at once – Will not this do as the basis of a better understanding between us?"