"The signorino has come in, _eccellenza_. He--he brought a lady with him. She seemed faint and ill, and I sent for the gardener's wife to come and look after her. I have given her the blue room, and the housekeeper is with her now. She was busy with the dinner when she first came." The old butler rubbed his hands together.

"I hope I did right," he said after a pause.

Hilaire roused himself. "Oh, quite right, of course. She will want something to eat."

"I have sent up a tray--"

"Ah, when?"

"He--here he is."

The old man drew back as Jean came in. "I am sorry to be late, Hilaire."

"It does not matter."

Thereafter both sat patiently waiting for the end of a dinner that seemed age-long. When, at last, they were alone Jean rose to his feet; he was very pale and his brown eyes glittered.

"Did Stefano tell you? I have found her and brought her here."

"Oh, she has come, has she?"

"You think less of her for that. Ah, you will misjudge her until you know her. Wait."

He hurried out of the room.

Hilaire stood on the hearth with his back to the fire. He repeated his formula, but there was a not unkindly light in his tired eyes, and when presently the door was opened and the girl came in he smiled.

The club foot, of which he was nervously conscious at times, held him to his place, but she came forward until she was close to him.

"You are his brother," she began. "I--what a good fire."

She knelt down on the bear skin and stretched her hands to the blaze.

Hilaire noticed that she was excessively thin; the rose-flushed cheeks were hollow and the curves of the sweet cleft chin too sharp. He looked at her as she crouched at his feet; the nape of the slim neck showed a very pure white against the shabby black of her dress, there were fine threads of gold in the soft brown tangle of her hair.

Jean was dragging one of the great armchairs closer.

"You are cold," he said anxiously. "Come and sit here."

She rose obediently.

"Have you had any dinner?" asked Hilaire.

"Yes; they brought me some soup in my room. I am not hungry now."

She spoke very simply, like a child. Jean had rifled all the other chairs to provide her with a sufficiency of cushions, and now he brought her a footstool.

"I think I must take my shoes off," she said. "So cold--you see they let the water in, and--"

"Take them off at once," ordered Hilaire, and he watched, still with that faint smile in his eyes, as Jean knelt to do his bidding.

"That's very nice," sighed the girl. "I never knew before that real happiness is just having lots to eat and being warm."

The two men looked at each other.

"I have often wondered about you," she said to Hilaire presently.

"Your eyes are just like his. I think if I had known that I should have had to come before; but you see I promised Cardinal Jacopo of Portugal--in San Miniato--that I would not. What am I talking about?"

Her voice broke and she covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" Jean would have gone to her, but his brother laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Leave her alone," he said. "She will be all right to-morrow. It's only excitement, nervous exhaustion. She must rest and eat. Wait quietly and don't look at her."

Jean moved restlessly about the room; Hilaire, gravely silent, seemed to see nothing.

So the two men waited until the girl was able to control her sobs.

"I am so sorry," she said presently. "I have made you uncomfortable; forgive me."

"Will you take a brandy-and-soda if I give it you?"

"Yes, if you think it will do me good."

Hilaire limped across to the sideboard. He was scarcely gone half a minute, but when he came back with a gla.s.s of the mixture he had prescribed he saw his brother kneeling at the girl's side, his arms about her, his face hidden in the folds of her skirt.

"Jean! Get up!" he said very sharply. "Pull yourself together."

Olive sat stiffly erect; her swollen, tear-stained lids hid the blue eyes, her pale, quivering lips formed words that were inaudible.

Hilaire ground his teeth. "Get up!"

After a while the lover loosed his hold; he bent to kiss the girl's feet; then he rose and went silently out of the room. Hilaire listened for the closing of another door before he rang the bell.

CHAPTER X

For some days and nights Olive lived only to eat and sleep. When she woke it was to hear a kind old voice urging her to take hot milk or soup, to see a kind old face framed in white hair set off by black lace lappets; and yet whenever she closed her eyes at first she was aware of a pa.s.sionate aching echo of words said that was sad as the sound of the sea in a sh.e.l.l. "I love you--I love you--" until at last sleep helped to knit up the ravelled sleave of care.

Every morning there were fresh roses for her.

"The signorino hopes you are better."

"Oh, much better, thank you." And after a while a day came when she felt really strong enough to get up. She dressed slowly and came down and out on to the terrace. The crumbling stones of the bal.u.s.trade were moss-grown, as was the slender body of the bronze Mercury, poised for flight and dark against the pale illimitable blue of the December sky.

Hilaire Avenel never tried to make Nature neat; the scarlet leaves of the Virginia creeper came fluttering down and were scattered on the worn black and white mosaic of the pavement; they showed like fire flickering in the sombre green of the cypresses. Beyond and below the garden, the olive and ilex woods, and the steep red roofs of Settignano, lay Florence, a city of the plain, and wreathed in a delicate mist. There was the great dome of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the tortuous silver streak that was Arno, spanned by her bridges; there was Giotto's tower, golden-white and rose golden, there the campanile of the Badia, the grim old Bargello, and the battlemented walls of the Palazzo Vecchio; farther still, across the river, the heights of San Miniato al Monte, Bellosguardo, and Mont' Oliveto, cypress crowned.

Two white rough-coated sheep-dogs came rushing up the steps from the garden to greet Olive with sharp barks of joy, and Hilaire was not slow to follow. Olive still thought him very like his brother, an older and greyer Jean.