Bice did not say anything for some time, and then she laughed. "The Contessa does not think of everything," she said.
Lucy looked at her with a question in her eyes. She wanted to ask if the Contessa was kind. But there was a certain domestic treachery involved in asking such a question.
"People are different," she said, with a certain soothing tone. "We are not made alike, you know; one person is good in one way and one in another." This abstract deliverance was not at all in Lucy's way. She returned to the particular point before them with relief. "England," she said, "must seem strange to you after your own country. I suppose it is much colder and less bright?"
"I have no country" said Bice; "everywhere is my country. We have a house in Rome, but we travel; we go from one place to another--to all the places that are what you call for pleasure. We go in the season. Sometimes it is for the waters, sometimes for the sports or the games--always _festa_ wherever we go."
"And you like that? To be sure, you are so very young; otherwise I should think it was rather tiresome," Lucy said.
"No, it is not rather tiresome," said Bice, with a roll of her "r," "it is horrible! When we came here I did not know why it was, but I rejoiced myself that there was no band playing. I thought at first it was merely _jour de relâche_: but when morning after morning came and no band, that was heavenly," she said, drawing a long breath.
"A band playing!" Lucy's laugh at the absurdity of the idea rang out with all the gaiety of a child. It amused her beyond measure, and Bice, always encouraged by approbation, went on.
"I expected it every morning. The house is so large. I thought the season, perhaps, was just beginning, and the people not arrived yet. Sometimes we go like that too soon. The rooms are cheaper. You can make your own arrangement."
Lucy looked at her very compassionately. "That is why you pass the mornings in your own room," she said, "were you never then in a country house before?"
"I do not know what is a country house. We have been in a great castle where there was the chase every day. No, that is not what _la chasse_ means in England--to shoot I would say. And then in the evening the theatre, tableaux, or music. But to be quiet all day and all night too, that is what I have never seen. We have never known it. It is confusing. It makes you feel as if all went on without any division; all one day, all one night."