"She is so lovely--so touching! She will win everybody's heart!"
He looked down upon her oddly, like some one oppressed by feelings and
thoughts beyond his own unravelling.
"She has been very unhappy," he said simply. "I think I can take care of
her."
Lydia looked at him anxiously. A sudden slight darkening seemed to
come into the day; and for one terrified moment she seemed to see
Tatham--dear, generous youth!--as the truly tragic figure in their
high mingled comedy.
Not Melrose--but Tatham! Then, swiftly, the cloud passed, and she laughed
at herself.
"Take care of her! You will be the happiest people in the world--save
two!"
He let her talk to him, the inner agitation whatever it was,
disappearing. She soothed, she steadied him. Now, at last, they were to
be true friends--comrades in the tasks and difficulties of life. Without
words, her heart promised it--to him and Felicia.
As they left the room, she pointed, smiling, to the drawings.
"So you were the elderly solicitor, with a taste for art, I used to see
in my dreams!"
His eyes lit up boyishly.
"I had to keep them here, for fear you'd find out. Now, we'll hang them
properly."
It was Victoria who broke the news to Netta Melrose. She, a little wasted
ghost among her pillows, received it calmly; yet with a certain
bitterness mingled in the calm. What did the money matter to her? And
what had she to do with this English world, and this young lord Felicia
was to marry? Far within, she hungered, on the threshold of death, as she
had hungered twenty years before, for the Italian sun, and the old
Italian streets, with the deep eaves and the sculptured doorways, and the
smells of leather and macaroni.
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