Indian Summer | Page 8

open carriage door, and making people walk round her cab, in the road,
which they did meekly enough, with the Florentine submissiveness to
the pretensions of any sort of vehicle. She said a dozen important
things that seemed to have just come into her head, and, "Why, how
stupid I am!" she called out, making Colville check the driver in his
first start, after she had got into the cab. "We are to have a few people
tonight. If you have no engagement, I should be so glad to have you
come. Can't you?"
"Yes, I can," said Colville, admiring the whole transaction and the
parties to it with a passive smile.
After finding her pocket, she found that her card-case was not in it, but
in the purse she had given Effie to carry; but she got her address at last,
and gave it to Colville, though he said he should remember it without.
"Any time between nine and eleven," she said. "It's so nice of you to
promise!"

She questioned him from under her half-lifted eyelids, and he added,
with a laugh, "I'll come!" and was rewarded with two pretty smiles, just
alike, from mother and daughter, as they drove away.

III
Twenty years earlier, when Mrs. Bowen was Miss Lina Ridgely, she
used to be the friend and confidante of the girl who jilted Colville.
They were then both so young that they could scarcely have been a year
out of school before they left home for the year they were spending in
Europe; but to the young man's inexperience they seemed the wisest
and maturest of society women. His heart quaked in his breast when he
saw them talking and laughing together, for fear they should be talking
and laughing about him; he was even a little more afraid of Miss
Ridgely than of her friend, who was dashing and effective, where Miss
Ridgely was serene and elegant, according to his feeling at that time;
but he never saw her after his rejection, and it was not till he read of her
marriage with the Hon. Mr. Bowen that certain vague impressions
began to define themselves. He then remembered that Lina Ridgely in
many fine little ways had shown a kindness, almost a compassion, for
him, as for one whose unconsciousness a hopeless doom impended
over. He perceived that she had always seemed to like him--a thing that
had not occurred to him in the stupid absorption of his passion for the
other--and fragments of proof that she had probably defended and
advocated him occurred to him, and inspired a vain and retrospective
gratitude; he abandoned himself to regrets, which were proper enough
in regard to Miss Ridgely, but were certainly a little unlawful
concerning Mrs. Bowen.
As he walked away toward his hotel he amused himself with the
conjecture whether he, with his forty-one years and his hundred and
eighty five pounds, were not still a pathetic and even a romantic figure
to this pretty and kindly woman, who probably imagined him as
heart-broken as ever. He was very willing to see more of her, if she
wished; but with the rain beginning to fall more thick and chill in the
darkening street, he could have postponed their next meeting till a

pleasanter evening without great self-denial. He felt a little twinge of
rheumatism in his shoulder when he got into his room, for your room in
a Florentine hotel is always some degrees colder than outdoors, unless
you have fire in it; and with the sun shining on his windows when he
went out after lunch, it had seemed to Colville ridiculous to have his
morning fire kept up. The sun was what he had taken the room for. It
was in it, the landlord assured him, from ten in the morning till four in
the afternoon; and so, in fact, it was, when it shone; but even then it
was not fully in it, but had a trick of looking in at the sides of the
window, and painting the chamber wall with a delusive glow. Colville
raked away the ashes of his fire-place, and throwing on two or three
fagots of broom and pine sprays, he had a blaze that would be very
pretty to dress by after dinner, but that gave out no warmth for the
present. He left it, and went down to the reading-room, as it was
labelled over the door, in homage to a predominance of
English-speaking people among the guests; but there was no fire there;
that was kindled only by request, and he shivered at the bare aspect of
the apartment, with its cold piano, its locked bookcases, and its table,
where the London Times, the _Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, and the
Italie_ of Rome exposed