Part 22 (1/2)
”Was it Marcello?” she asked quietly enough, though her voice sounded a little dull.
”No, dear,” answered her mother. ”It was Folco Corbario. I wrote to him some days ago and he came to see me. Marcello has left Paris. I did not know you had come home.”
Aurora sat down rather wearily, pulled out her hatpins, and laid her hat on her knee. Then she slowly turned it round and round, examining every inch of it with profound attention, as women do. They see things in hats which we do not.
”Mamma--” Aurora got no further, and went on turning the hat round.
”Yes? What were you going to say?”
”Nothing--I have forgotten.” The hat revolved steadily. ”Are we going to stay here long?”
”No. Paris is too expensive. When we have got the few things we want we will go back to Italy--next week, I should think.”
”I wish we were rich,” observed Aurora.
”I never heard you say that before,” answered her mother. ”But after all, wis.h.i.+ng does no harm, and I am silly enough to wish we were rich too.”
”If I married Marcello, I should be very rich,” said Aurora, ceasing to turn the hat, but still contemplating it critically.
Maddalena looked at her daughter in some surprise. The girl's face was quite grave.
”You had better think of getting rich in some other way, my dear,” said the Contessa presently, with an asperity that did not escape Aurora, but produced no impression on her.
”I was only supposing,” she said. ”But if it comes to that, it would be much better for him to marry me than that good-looking peasant girl he has picked up.”
The Contessa sat up straight and stared at her in astonishment. There was a coolness in the speech that positively horrified her.
”My dear child!” she cried. ”What in the world are you talking about?”
”Regina,” answered Aurora, looking up, and throwing the hat upon the table. ”I am talking about Marcello's Regina. Did you suppose I had never heard of her, and that I did not guess that it was she, the other night? I had a good look at her. I hate her, but she is handsome. You cannot deny that.”
”I do not deny it, I'm sure!” The Contessa hardly knew what to say.
”Very well. Would it not be much better for Marcello if he married me than if he let Regina marry him, as she will!”
”I--possibly--you put it so strangely! But I am sure Marcello will never think of marrying her.”
”Then why does he go about with her, and what is it all for?” Aurora gazed innocently at her mother, waiting for an answer which did not come. ”Besides,” she added, ”the girl will marry him, of course.”
”Perhaps. I daresay you are right, and after all, she may be in love with him. Why should you care, child?”
”Because he used to be my best friend,” Aurora answered demurely. ”Is it wrong to take an interest in one's friends? And I still think of him as my friend, though I have never had a chance to speak to him since that day by the Roman sh.o.r.e, when he went off in a rage because I laughed at him. I wonder whether he has forgotten that! They say he lost his memory during his illness.”
”What a strange girl you are! You have hardly ever spoken of him in all this time, and now”--the Contessa laughed as if she thought the idea absurd--”and now you talk of marrying him!”
”I have seen Regina,” Aurora replied, as if that explained everything.
The Contessa returned no answer, and she was rather unusually silent and preoccupied during the rest of that day. She was reflecting that if Aurora had not chanced to meet Marcello just when Regina was with him the girl might never have thought of him again, except with a half-amused recollection of the little romantic tenderness she had once felt for the friend and playfellow of her childhood. Maddalena was a wise woman now, and did not underestimate the influence of little things when great ones were not far off. That is a very important part of worldly wisdom, which is the science of estimating chances in a game of which love, hate, marriage, fortune, and social life and death may be the stakes.
Her impulse was to prevent Aurora from seeing Marcello for a long time, for the thought of a possible marriage had never attracted her, and since the appearance of Regina on the scene every instinct of her nature was against it. Her pride revolted at the idea that her daughter might be the rival of a peasant girl, quite as much as at the possibility of its being said that she had captured her old friend's son for the sake of his money. But she remembered her own younger years and she judged Aurora by herself. There had been more in that little romantic tenderness for Marcello than any one had guessed, much of it had remained, it had perhaps grown instead of dying out, and the sight of Regina had awakened it to something much stronger than a girlish fancy.