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Page 83
Rose was ashamed how little she had noticed in the house, and how
few of the things he spoke of as curious or beautiful in it she had
even seen. Swamped in thought of Frederick, she appeared to have lived
in San Salvatore blindly, and more than half the time had gone, and
what had been the good of it? She might just as well have been sitting
hankering on Hampstead Heath. No, she mightn't; through all her
hankerings she had been conscious that she was at least in the very
heart of beauty; and indeed it was this beauty, this longing to share
it, that had first started her off hankering.
Mr. Briggs, however, was too much alive for her to be able to spare any
attention at this moment for Frederick, and she praised the servants in
answer to his questions, and praised the yellow sitting-room without
telling him she had only been in it once and then was ignominiously
ejected, and she told him she knew hardly anything about art and
curiosities, but thought perhaps if somebody would tell her about them
she would know more, and she said she had spent every day since her
arrival out-of-doors, because out-of-doors there was so very wonderful
and different from anything she had ever seen.
Briggs walked by her side along his paths that were yet so
happily for the moment her paths, and felt all the innocent glows of
family life. He was an orphan and an only child, and had a warm,
domestic disposition. He would have adored a sister and spoilt a
mother, and was beginning at this time to think of marrying; for though
he had been very happy with his various loves, each of whom, contrary
to the usual experience, turned ultimately into his devoted friend, he
was fond of children and thought he had perhaps now got to the age of
settling if he did not wish to be too old by the time his eldest son
was twenty. San Salvatore had latterly seemed a little forlorn. He
fancied it echoed when he walked about it. He had felt lonely there;
so lonely that he had preferred this year to miss out a spring and let
it. It wanted a wife in it. It wanted that final touch of warmth and
beauty, for he never thought of his wife except in terms of warmth and
beauty--she would of course be beautiful and kind. It amused him how
much in love with this vague wife he was already.
At such a rate was he making friends with the lady with the sweet
name as he walked along the path towards the lighthouse, that he was
sure presently he would be telling her everything about himself and his
past doings and his future hopes; and the thought of such a swiftly
developing confidence made him laugh.
"Why are you laughing?" she asked, looking at him and smiling.
"It's so like coming home," he said.
"But it is coming home for you to come here."
"I mean really like coming home. To one's--one's family. I
never had a family. I'm an orphan."
"Oh, are you?" said Rose with the proper sympathy. "I hope
you've not been one very long. No--I don't mean I hope you have been
one very long. No--I don't know what I mean, except that I'm sorry."
He laughed again. "Oh I'm used to it. I haven't anybody. No
sisters or brothers."
"Then you're an only child," she observed intelligently.
"Yes. And there's something about you that's exactly my idea of
a--of a family."
She was amused.
"So--cosy," he said, looking at her and searching for a word.
"You wouldn't think so if you saw my house in Hampstead," she
said, a vision of that austere and hard-seated dwelling presenting
itself to her mind, with nothing soft in it except the shunned and
neglected Du Barri sofa. No wonder, she thought, for a moment
clear-brained, that Frederick avoided it. There was nothing cosy
about his family.
"I don't believe any place you lived in could be anything but
exactly like you," he said.
"You're not going to pretend San Salvatore is like me?"
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