LOVE you, Lily—love you passionately! Why should you be offended at my saying this? Surely you can understand that we Southerners are not like cold, calculating Englishmen? We say what is in our heart. You laughed just now when I told you that you had been my ideal woman for years, and yet, Lily, it is true!”
Beppo's voice was broken with what seemed to be real tears, and Lily, in spite of herself, felt moved and thrilled by his ardent words.
It was the first evening of the young man's stay at La Solitude, and the two were alone in the garden. After dinner it was Lily who had suggested that they should go out of doors. She had done so quite simply, thinking that the Count and Countess would, as a matter of course, come out too. But they had both stayed in the stuffy salon, only opening one of the windows for a moment to watch with eager, benign eyes the two young people go off together, alone, into the moonlight, to the right, where there was a grass path which led to the confines of the little property.
It was there, pacing up and down almost within earshot of the house, that Beppo, soon throwing away his cigarette, had begun pouring out ardent declarations of love....
At first Lily had tried to treat what he said as a joke, or as a half-joke, but he had soon forced her to take him seriously, for he became more violent, more passionate in his utterances.
Now she was just a little frightened. How would she ever get through the next few days, if whenever they were alone Beppo talked and, what was far worse, acted as he was now doing? For suddenly he had seized her hands, and now he was pressing burning kisses on their upturned palms.
Perhaps he realised he was frightening and offending her, for, with that curious mixture of real ardour, passion, and cool, calculating intelligence, which is so marked a trait in most Southerners, he suddenly dropped her hands.
“Forgive me!” he cried pathetically. “I have been precipitate and selfish to-night. You are so good in allowing me to be your friend! It is well to begin with friendship when one aspires to love.”
And, as he had expected her to do, Lily eagerly met him half-way.
“I have always hoped you would be my friend,” she said sincerely. “Ever since I came here, ever since Aunt Cosy began talking about you to me, I hoped that if ever we met we should be real friends, Beppo.”
“I too hoped it,” he said earnestly. “Do you remember that drive we took, only a few days ago? As we talked I felt that my soul and your soul were one! We spoke so intimately; we said so many things that as a rule a young man and a young woman do not say to one another!”
“I don't quite know what you mean,” said Lily uncomfortably.
“Surely you remember my telling you how little I understood papa and mamma? Should I have said that to one I did not trust? And then you told me of your lonely childhood, Lily,”—his voice dropped; it became very soft and caressing and gentle—“and I felt that we were truly friends henceforth!”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I enjoyed that drive very much. And it's quite true, Beppo, that I do like you very much more when you are—what shall I say?—sensible, than when you talk as you did just now.”
“My pure angel!” he exclaimed ecstatically. “You do not know what it means to me to hear you speak like this!” He added in a lower tone: “It shows me what, of course, I already knew—that no man has ever made love to you, my exquisite Lily. You are a fragrant flower, who, till now, has bloomed alone!”
And though Beppo's words seemed to the girl walking by his side exaggerated, and even absurd, he uttered them in such a serious way and again Lily felt oddly touched. Poor Beppo! Perhaps he had never had a chance of a straightforward, happy friendship with a French or Italian girl.
They were standing now at the extreme end of the grass path. From there, in the daytime, was a beautiful view of sea, sky, and coastline, towards France; and Beppo began telling her some curious stories of his ancestors, who had been almost as great people through the ages, when the Riviera belonged to Italy, as were the Grimaldis on their frowning rock.
At last, at her suggestion, they turned and walked slowly back to the house. The Countess had sat up for them, and as they came into the salon, she looked eagerly into Lily's face, only to see, with disappointment, that the English girl looked her usual quiet, unemotional self.
After Lily had gone upstairs, Beppo lingered on a moment or two with his mother, and at last he answered the mute inquiry in her eyes.