Eleanor | Page 8

brought up to go to meetings and sit under a minister? Were her forbears married in drawing-rooms and under trees? The Fates were certainly frolicking when they brought her here! How am I to keep Edward in order?'
And suddenly, with a little signalling of eye and brow, she too conveyed to Manisty, who was looking listlessly towards her, that he was behaving as badly as even she could have expected. He made a little face that only she saw, but he turned to Miss Foster and began to talk,--all the time adding to the mountain of crumbs beside him, and scarcely waiting to listen to the girl's answers.
'You came by Pisa?'
'Yes. Mrs. Lewinson found me an escort--'
'It was a mistake--' he said, hurrying his words like a schoolboy. 'You should have come by Perugia and Spoleto. Do you know Spello?'
Miss Foster stared.
'Edward!' said Miss Manisty, 'how could she have heard of Spello? It is the first time she has ever been in Italy.'
'No matter!' he said, and in a moment his moroseness was lit up, chased away by the little pleasure of his own whim--'Some day Miss Foster must hear of Spello. May I not be the first person to tell her that she should see Spello?'
'Really, Edward!' cried Miss Manisty, looking at him in a mild exasperation.
'But there was so much to see at Florence!' said Lucy Foster, wondering.
'No--pardon me!--there is nothing to be seen at Florence--or nothing that one ought to wish to see--till the destroyers of the town have been hung in their own new Piazza!'
'Oh yes!--that is a real disfigurement!' said the girl eagerly. 'And yet--can't one understand?--they must use their towns for themselves. They can't always be thinking of them as museums--as we do.'
'The argument would be good if the towns were theirs,' he said, flashing round upon her. 'One can stand a great deal from lawful owners.'
Miss Foster looked in bewilderment at Mrs. Burgoyne. That lady laughed and bent across the table.
'Let me warn you, Miss Foster, this gentleman here must be taken with a grain of salt when he talks about poor Italy--and the Italians.'
'But I thought'--said Lucy Foster, staring at her host--
'You thought he was writing a book on Italy? That doesn't matter. It's the new Italy of course that he hates--the poor King and Queen--the Government and the officials.'
'He wants the old times back?'--said Miss Foster, wondering--'when the priests tyrannised over everybody? when the Italians had no country--and no unity?'
She spoke slowly, at last looking her host in the face. Her frown of nervousness had disappeared. Manisty laughed.
'Pio Nono pulled down nothing--not a brick--or scarcely. And it is a most excellent thing, Miss Foster, to be tyrannised over by priests.'
His great eyes shone--one might even say, glared upon her. His manner was not agreeable; and Miss Foster coloured.
'I don't think so'--she said, and then was too shy to say any more.
'Oh, but you will think so,'--he said, obstinately--'only you must stay long enough in the country. What people are pleased to call Papal tyranny puts a few people in prison--and tells them what books to read. Well!--what matter? Who knows what books they ought to read?'
'But all their long struggle!--and their heroes! They had to make themselves a nation--'
The words stumbled on the girl's tongue, but her effort, the hot feeling in her young face became her.--Miss Manisty thought to herself, 'Oh, we shall dress, and improve her--We shall see!'--
'One has first to settle whether it was worth while. What does a new nation matter? Theirs, anyway, was made too quick,' said Manisty, rising in answer to his aunt's signal.
'But liberty matters!' said the girl. She stood an instant with her hand on the back of her chair, unconsciously defiant.
'Ah! Liberty!' said Manisty--'Liberty!' He lifted his shoulders contemptuously.
Then backing to the wall, he made room for her to pass. The girl felt almost as though she had been struck. She moved hurriedly, appealingly towards Miss Manisty, who took her arm kindly as they left the room.
'Don't let my nephew frighten you, my dear'--she said--'He never thinks like anybody else.'
'I read so much at Florence--and on the journey'--said Lucy, while her hand trembled in Miss Manisty's--'Mrs. Browning--Mazzini--many things. I could not put that time out of my head!'
CHAPTER II
On the way back to the salon the ladies passed once more through the large book-room or library which lay between it and the dining-room. Lucy Foster looked round it, a little piteously, as though she were seeking for something to undo the impression--the disappointment--she had just received.
'Oh! my dear, you never saw such a place as it was when we arrived in March'--said Miss Manisty. 'It was the billiard-room--a ridiculous table--and ridiculous balls--and a tiled floor without a scrap of carpet--and the cold! In the whole apartment there were just two bedrooms with