"A short time—quite a short time," she stammered, as if the shortness of the time would reassure him.
"I should like to know how long, if you can remember."
She entered into elaborate calculations on her fingers. "Exactly eleven days," she said at last.
"How long have you been here?"
More calculations, while he tapped irritably with his foot. "Close on three weeks."
"Did you know him before you came?"
"No."
"Oh! Who is he?"
"A native of the place."
The second silence took place. They had left the plain now and were climbing up the outposts of the hills, the olive–trees still accompanying. The driver, a jolly fat man, had got out to ease the horses, and was walking by the side of the carriage.
"I understood they met at the hotel."
"It was a mistake of Mrs. Theobald’s."
"I also understand that he is a member of the Italian nobility."
She did not reply.
"May I be told his name?"
Miss Abbott whispered, "Carella." But the driver heard her, and a grin split over his face. The engagement must be known already.
"Carella? Conte or Marchese, or what?"
"Signor," said Miss Abbott, and looked helplessly aside.
"Perhaps I bore you with these questions. If so, I will stop."
"Oh, no, please; not at all. I am here—my own idea—to give all information which you very naturally—and to see if somehow—please ask anything you like."
"Then how old is he?"
"Oh, quite young. Twenty–one, I believe."
There burst from Philip the exclamation, "Good Lord!"
"One would never believe it," said Miss Abbott, flushing. "He looks much older."
"And is he good–looking?" he asked, with gathering sarcasm.
She became decisive. "Very good–looking. All his features are good, and he is well built—though I dare say English standards would find him too short."
Philip, whose one physical advantage was his height, felt annoyed at her implied indifference to it.
"May I conclude that you like him?"
She replied decisively again, "As far as I have seen him, I do."
At that moment the carriage entered a little wood, which lay brown and sombre across the cultivated hill. The trees of the wood were small and leafless, but noticeable for this—that their stems stood in violets as rocks stand in the summer sea. There are such violets in England, but not so many. Nor are there so many in Art, for no painter has the courage. The cart–ruts were channels, the hollow lagoons; even the dry white margin of the road was splashed, like a causeway soon to be submerged under the advancing tide of spring. Philip paid no attention at the time: he was thinking what to say next. But his eyes had registered the beauty, and next March he did not forget that the road to Monteriano must traverse innumerable flowers.
"As far as I have seen him, I do like him," repeated Miss Abbott, after a pause.
He thought she sounded a little defiant, and crushed her at once.
"What is he, please? You haven’t told me that. What’s his position?"
She opened her mouth to speak, and no sound came from it. Philip waited patiently. She tried to be audacious, and failed pitiably.
"No position at all. He is kicking his heels, as my father would say. You see, he has only just finished his military service."
"As a private?"
"I suppose so. There is general conscription. He was in the Bersaglieri, I think. Isn’t that the crack regiment?"
"The men in it must be short and broad. They must also be able to walk six miles an hour."
She looked at him wildly, not understanding all that he said, but feeling that he was very clever. Then she continued her defence of Signor Carella.
"And now, like most young men, he is looking out for something to do."
"Meanwhile?"
"Meanwhile, like most young men, he lives with his people—father, mother, two sisters, and a tiny tot of a brother."
There was a grating sprightliness about her that drove him nearly mad. He determined to silence her at last.
"One more question, and only one more. What is his father?"
