Dorothy, and Other Italian Stories

"I only meant, then, that Mrs. Winthrop did not strike me as at all the sort of person who would allow anything prosaic to interfere with her poetical, heartfelt enthusiasms."

She laughed gayly. "You are delightful. You have such a heavy apparatus for fibbing that it becomes fairly stately. You do not believe I have any enthusiasms at all," she added. Her eyes were dark blue, with long lashes; they were very fine eyes.

"I will believe whatever you please," said John Ford.

"Very well. Believe what I tell you."

"You include only what you tell in words?"

"Plainly, you are not troubled by timidity," said the lady, laughing a second time.

"On the contrary, it is excess of timidity. It makes me desperate and crude."

They had walked on, and now came up with the others. "Does he amuse you?" said Sylvia, in a low tone, as Cousin Walpole in his turn walked onward with the new-comer. "I heard you laughing."

"Yes; but he is not at all what you said. He is so shy and ill at ease that it is almost painful."

"Dear me!" said the aunt, with concern. "The best thing, then, will be for him to come and stay with us. You have so much company that it will be good for him; his shyness will wear off."

"I have invited him, but I doubt his coming," said the lady of the manor.

The outlook was a little terrace built out over the water. Mrs. Winthrop seated herself and took off her garden-hat (Mrs. Winthrop had a very graceful head, and thick, soft, brown hair). "Not so close, Gibbon," she said, as the shaggy dog laid himself down beside her.

"You call your dog Gibbon?" said Ford.

"Yes; he came from Lausanne, where Gibbon lived; and I think he looks just like him. But pray put on your hat, Mr. Ford. A man in the open air, deprived of his hat, is always a wretched object, and always takes cold."

"I may be wretched, but I do not take cold," replied Ford, letting his hat lie.

"John does look very strong," said Sylvia, with pride.

"O fortunate youth – if he but knew his good-fortune!" said Cousin Walpole. "From the Latin, sir; I do not quote the original tongue in the presence of ladies, which would seem pedantic. You do look strong indeed, and I congratulate you. I myself have never been an athlete; but I admire, and with impartiality, the muscles of the gladiator."

"Surely, Cousin Walpole, there is nothing in common between John and a gladiator!"

"Your pardon, Cousin Sylvia. I was speaking generally. My conversation, sir," said the bachelor, turning to Ford, "is apt to be general."

"No one likes personalities, I suppose," replied Ford, watching the last hues of the sunset.

"On the contrary, I am devoted to them," said Mrs. Winthrop.

"Oh no, Katharine; you malign yourself," said Sylvia. "You must not believe all she says, John."

"Mr. Ford has just promised to do that very thing," remarked Mrs. Winthrop.

"Dear me!" said Sylvia. Her tone of dismay was so sincere that they all laughed. "You know, dear, you have so much imagination," she said, apologetically, to her cousin.

"Mr. Ford has not," replied the younger lady; "so the exercise will do him no harm."

The sky behind the splendid white mass of Mont Blanc was of a deep warm gold; the line of snowy peaks attending the monarch rose irregularly against this radiance from east to west, framed by the dark nearer masses of the Salève and Voirons. The sun had disappeared, cresting with glory as he sank the soft purple summits of the Jura, and sending up a blaze of color in the narrow valley of the Rhone. Then, as all this waned slowly into grayness, softly, shyly, the lovely after-glow floated up the side of the monarch, tingeing all his fields of pure white ice and snow with rosy light as it moved onward, and resting on the far peak in the sky long after the lake and its shores had faded into night.

"This lake, sir," said Cousin Walpole, "is remarkable for the number of persons distinguished in literature who have at various times resided upon its banks. I may mention, cursorily, Voltaire, Sismondi, Gibbon, Rousseau, Sir Humphry Davy, D'Aubigné, Calvin, Grimm, Benjamin Constant, Schlegel, Châteaubriand, Byron, Shelley, the elder Dumas, and in addition that most eloquent authoress and noble woman Madame de Staël."

"The banks must certainly be acquainted with a large amount of fine language," said Ford.

"And oh, how we have enjoyed Coppet, John! You remember Coppet?" said Miss Pitcher. "We have had, I assure you, days and conversations there which I, for one, can never forget. Do you remember, Katharine, that moment by the fish-pond, when, carried away by the influences of the spot, Mr. Percival exclaimed, and with such deep feeling, 'Etonnante femme!'"

"Meaning Mrs. Winthrop?" said Ford.

"No, John, no; meaning Madame de Staël," replied the little aunt.

Mr. Ford did not take up his abode at Miolans, in spite of his aunt's wish and Mrs. Winthrop's invitation. He preferred a little inn among the vineyards, half a mile distant. But he came often to the villa, generally rowing himself down the lake in a skiff. The skiff, indeed, spent most of its time moored at the water-steps of Miolans, for its owner accompanied the ladies in various excursions to Vevey, Clarens, Chillon, and southward to Geneva.

"I thought you had so much company," he said one afternoon to Sylvia, when they happened to be alone. "I have been coming and going now for ten days, and have seen no one."

"These ten days were reserved for the Storms," replied Miss Pitcher. "But old Mrs. Storm fell ill at Baden-Baden, and what could they do?"

"Take care of her, I should say."

"Gilbert Storm was poignantly disappointed. He is, I think, on the whole, the best among Katharine's outside admirers."

"Then there are inside ones?"

"Several. You know Mr. Winthrop was thirty-five years older than Katharine. It was hardly to be expected, therefore, that she should love him – I mean in the true way."

"Whatever she might have done in the false."

"You are too cynical, my dear boy. There was nothing false about it; Katharine was simply a child. He was very fond of her, I assure you. And died most happily."

"For all concerned."

Sylvia shook her head. But Mrs. Winthrop's step was now heard in the hall; she came in with several letters in her hand. "Any news?" said Miss Pitcher.

"No," replied the younger lady. "Nothing ever happens any more."

"As Ronsard sang,

"'Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame!
Las! le temps non; mais nous nous en allons,'"

said Ford, bringing forward her especial chair.

"That is true," she answered, soberly, almost sombrely.

That evening the moonlight on the lake was surpassingly lovely; there was not a ripple to break the sheen of the water, and the clear outline of Mont Blanc rose like silver against the dark black-blue of the sky. They all strolled down to the shore; Mrs. Winthrop went out with Ford in his skiff, "for ten minutes." Sylvia watched the little boat float up and down for twenty; then she returned to the house and read for forty more. When Sylvia was down-stairs she read the third canto of "Childe Harold"; in her own room she kept a private supply of the works of Miss Yonge. At ten Katharine entered. "Has John gone?" said the aunt, putting in her mark and closing the Byronic volume.

"Yes; he came to the door, but would not come in."