At last the moment of departure came. Rita, with a flush of excitement about her, her cheeks hot, her eyes shining, and without a tear, came to the steamboat with her husband to see him away. He whispered again in her ear that he would not stay a moment longer than he could help; that he would count the days he was away from her; that she must not worry about him, must not feel lonely.
“Lonely!” she cried, in a tone which wounded poor Harry deeply. “Oh no, I shall not be lonely. I mean to amuse myself very much. I shall go everywhere. I shall not miss you at all. Ser Paolo will take care of me.”
“You will have your father to take care of you, my darling,” Harry said, very gravely, with a little surprise; and then he added, with a laugh, “he will be glad to be rid of me for once, to have you all to himself. But Paul-o, all the same, will stand by you, I know,” he said, turning round to his friend lest his susceptible feelings should be wounded; “it is not that I doubt Paul-o--who will do everything.”
“Yes, everything,” Paolo said, with a fervent grip of his friend’s hand.
And Rita laughed. Why should she laugh? She did not shed a tear to part with him. Harry looked over the bulwark of the ship and watched his little wife standing in the boat which had brought them on board as long as he could make her out. The boatmen lay on their oars, and Rita stood up, waving her handkerchief, with Paolo by her side. These two figures, and after them all the features of the well-known scene, and then the very place itself, which was his home, which contained all his independent life, dropped away into the mists, into the distance. He had said to himself many a day that he would never go back; yet he was going back, severing himself, as he had done before, from everything he knew or cared for. And Rita had not seemed to care! He was not sentimental, but he turned away when there was no longer anything to be seen of Leghorn, with a little shiver, and a pang at his heart.