Eleanor | Page 7

backward look towards the
reflection in the glass, she left her room--her heart beating fast with
timidity and expectation.
* * * * *
'Oh! poor child--poor child!--what a frock!'
Such was the inward ejaculation of Mrs. Burgoyne, as the door of the
salon was thrown open by the Italian butler, and a very tall girl came
abruptly through, edging to one side as though she were trying to
escape the servant, and looking anxiously round the vast room.
Manisty also turned as the door opened. Miss Manisty caught his
momentary expression of wonder, as she herself hurried forward to
meet the new-comer.
'You have been very quick, my dear, and I am sure you must be
hungry.--This is an old friend of ours--Mrs. Burgoyne--my
nephew--Edward Manisty. He knows all your Boston cousins, if not
you. Edward, will you take Miss Foster?--she's the stranger.'
Mrs. Burgoyne pressed the girl's hand with a friendly effusion. Beyond
her was a dark-haired man, who bowed in silence. Lucy Foster took his
arm, and he led her through a large intervening room, in which were
many tables and many books, to the dining-room.
On the way he muttered a few embarrassed words as to the weather and
the lateness of dinner, walking meanwhile so fast that she had to hurry
after him. 'Good heavens, why she is a perfect chess-board!' he thought
to himself, looking askance at her dress, in a sudden and passionate
dislike--'one could play draughts upon her. What has my Aunt been

about?'
The girl looked round her in bewilderment as they sat down. What a
strange place! The salon in her momentary glance round it had seemed
to her all splendour. She had been dimly aware of pictures, fine
hangings, luxurious carpets. Here on the other hand all was rude and
bare. The stained walls were covered with a series of tattered daubs,
that seemed to be meant for family portraits--of the Malestrini family
perhaps, to whom the villa belonged? And between the portraits there
were rough modern doors everywhere of the commonest wood and
manufacture which let in all the draughts, and made the room not a
room, but a passage. The uneven brick floor was covered in the centre
with some thin and torn matting; many of the chairs ranged against the
wall were broken; and the old lamp that swung above the table gave
hardly any light.
Miss Manisty watched her guest's face with a look of amusement.
'Well, what do you think of our dining-room, my dear? I wanted to
clean it and put it in order. But my nephew there wouldn't have a thing
touched.'
She looked at Manisty, with a movement of the lips and head that
seemed to implore him to make some efforts.
Manisty frowned a little, lifted his great brow and looked, not at Miss
Foster, but at Mrs. Burgoyne--
'The room, as it happens, gives me more pleasure than any other in the
villa.'
Mrs. Burgoyne laughed.
'Because it's hideous?'
'If you like. I should only call it the natural, untouched thing.'
Then while his Aunt and Mrs. Burgoyne made mock of him, he fell

silent again, nervously crumbling his bread with a large wasteful hand.
Lucy Foster stole a look at him, at the strong curls of black hair piled
above the brow, the moody embarrassment of the eyes, the energy of
the lips and chin.
Then she turned to her companions. Suddenly the girl's clear brown
skin flushed rosily, and she abruptly took her eyes from Mrs.
Burgoyne.
Miss Manisty, however--in despair of her nephew--was bent upon
doing her own duty. She asked all the proper questions about the girl's
journey, about the cousins at Florence, about her last letters from home.
Miss Foster answered quickly, a little breathlessly, as though each
question were an ordeal that had to be got through. And once or twice,
in the course of the conversation, she looked again at Mrs. Burgoyne,
more lingeringly each time. That lady wore a thin dress gleaming with
jet. The long white arms showed under the transparent stuff. The
slender neck and delicate bosom were bare,--too bare surely,--that was
the trouble. To look at her filled the girl's shrinking Puritan sense with
discomfort. But what small and graceful hands!--and how she used
them!--how she turned her neck!--how delicious her voice was! It made
the new-comer think of some sweet plashing stream in her own
Vermont valleys. And then, every now and again, how subtle and
startling was the change of look!--the gaiety passing in a moment, with
the drooping of eye and mouth, into something sad and harsh, like a
cloud dropping round a goddess. In her elegance and self-possession
indeed, she seemed to the girl a kind of goddess--heathenishly divine,
because of that mixture of unseemliness, but