Daphne | Page 9

the villa she stopped and looked at her companion. The sun was setting, and a golden haze filled the air. It ringed with light the figure before her, standing there, the face, with its beauty of color, and its almost insolent joyousness, rising above the rough sheepskin coat.
"Who are you?" she gasped, terrified. "Who are you, really?" The confused splendor dazzled her eyes, and she turned and ran swiftly down the hill.
CHAPTER V
"A man is ill," observed Daphne, in the Roman tongue.
"What?" demanded Giacomo.
"A man is ill," repeated Daphne firmly. She had written it out, and she knew that it was right.
"Her mind wanders," Giacomo hinted to his wife.
"No, no, no! It's the Signorina herself," cried Assunta, whose wits were quicker than her husband's. "She is saying that she is ill. What is it, Signorina mia? Is it your head, or your back, or your stomach? Are you cold? Have you fever?"
"Si," answered Daphne calmly. The answer that usually quieted Assunta failed now. Then she tried the smile. That also failed.
"Tell me," pleaded Assunta, speaking twice as fast as usual, in order to move the Signorina's wits to quicker understanding. "If the Signorina is ill the Contessa will blame me. It is measles perhaps; Sor Tessa's children have it in the village." She felt of the girl's forehead and pulse, and stood more puzzled than before.
"The Signorina exaggerates, perhaps?" she remarked in question.
"Thank you!" said Daphne beseechingly.
That was positively her last shot, and if it missed its aim she knew not what to do. She saw that the two brown faces before her were full of apprehension, and she came back to her original proposition.
"A man is ill."
The faces were blank. Daphne hastily consulted her phrase-book.
"I wish food," she remarked glibly. "I wish soup, and fish, and red wine and white, and everything included, tutto compreso."
The brown eyes lighted; these were more familiar terms.
"Now?" cried Assunta and Giacomo in one breath, "at ten o'clock in the morning?"
"Si," answered Daphne firmly, "please, thank you." And she disappeared.
An hour later they summoned her, and looked at her in bewilderment when she entered the dining-room with her hat on. Giacomo stood ready for service, and the Signorina's soup was waiting on the table.
The girl laughed when she saw it.
"Per me? No," she said, touching her dress with her finger; "for him, up there," and she pointed upward.
Giacomo shook his head and groaned, for his understanding was exhausted.
"I go to carry food to the man who is ill," recited Daphne, her foot tapping the floor in impatience. She thrust her phrase-book out toward Giacomo, but he shook his head again, being one whose knowledge was superior to the mere accomplishment of reading.
Daphne's short skirt and red felt hat disappeared in the kitchen. Presently she returned with Assunta and a basket. The two understood her immediate purpose now, however bewildering the ultimate. They packed the basket with a right good will: red wine in a transparent flask, yellow soup in a shallow pitcher, bread, crisp lettuce, and thin slices of beef. Then Daphne gave the basket to Giacomo and beckoned him to come after her.
He climbed behind his lady up the narrow path by the waterfalls through damp grass and trickling fern, then up the great green slope toward the clump of oak trees. By the low gray tent they halted, and Giacomo's expression changed. He had not understood the Signorina, he said hastily, and he begged the Signorina's pardon. She was good, she was gracious.
"Speak to him," said Daphne impatiently; "go in, give him food."
He lifted the loose covering that served as the side of a tent, and found the sick man. Giacomo chattered, his brown fingers moving swiftly by way of punctuation. The sick man chattered, too, his fingers moving more slowly in their weakness. Giacomo seemed excited by what he heard, and Daphne, watching from a little distance, wondered if fever must not increase under the influence of tongues that wagged so fast. She strolled away, picking tiny, pink-tipped daisies and blue succory blossoms growing in the moist green grass. From high on a distant hillside, among his nibbling sheep, the shepherd watched.
Giacomo presently stopped talking and fed the invalid the soup and part of the wine he had brought. He knew too much, as a wise Italian, to give a sick man bread and beef. Then he made promises of blankets, and of more soup to-morrow, tucked the invalid up again, and prepared to go home. On the way down the hill he was explosive in his excitement; surely the Signorina must understand such vehement words.
"The sheep are Count Gianelli's sheep," he shouted. "I knew the sheep before, and there isn't a finer flock on the hills. This man is from Ortalo, a day's journey. The Signorina understands?"
She smiled, the reassuring