"One has to be quick in order not to appear too awfully slow in comparison with you, dear," answered Julius at once.
It amused her to talk to him, he was so ready; and always with something well turned, that pleased her. There was something, too, that was refreshing in hearing the small talk of a celebrity, often a little doubtful in grammar, and interspersed now and then with a little generous exaggeration that she liked. She had read his books, and knew what he could do with the language when he pleased. And most of all she liked to speak and to be spoken to in English,--it seemed so much more natural.
It was no trouble to Julius to talk to her. With some people he was as silent as the grave, which produced the impression that he was very profound. With others he was ready for a laugh and a jest at any moment, and they thought him brilliant; but there were very few with whom he talked seriously. Leonora saw all his phases in turn, for she felt that if she did not know his character, she was in sympathy with his mind and understood him.
But Julius was anxious to reach the spot he had chosen, in order to let Carantoni know of his whereabouts. He suggested to Leonora that if it was quite convenient to her they might go the next day, when she had had a good night's rest. She assented readily enough. To tell the truth, with all her gayety and enjoyment of the novel situation, she disliked Naples, and she hated to feel that in the morning she should look out of her window across the bay and see Sorrento, and think of her husband as being there. She did not know that when she laid her head on her pillow that night Marcantonio would be in the station in Naples, on his way to Rome, and not half a mile away from her.
"Are you ever seasick?" asked Julius suddenly.
"Oh, Julius! You know I am not," she said reproachfully. He laughed.
"No? I mean in a steamer. Boats are quite different."
"I don't know," said Leonora. "I have often crossed the Channel, and I was never ill at all."
"Oh, then of course it's all right!" he said. "You would not mind in the least. We had better go to Genoa in the steamer; it is very decent and much cooler than all those miles of rail and dust."
And so they made their arrangements, and the next day--the day when Marcantonio was engaging the detectives in Rome--they went on board the "Florio" steamer and left Naples, and Sorrento, and Ischia, and all the countless reminiscences that attached to the glorious bay, and were carried up the coast.