Augustine had continued to look at him, but the animation had faded out of her eyes. “Men’s wives are of little interest to me,” she said. “What I want is one who is young, and who would understand and do what I say.”
Here Giovanna got up from her chair, pushing it back with a force which almost made Stevens drop the dish he was carrying. “Me!” she cried, with a gleam of malice in her eyes, “me, ma sœur! I am younger than Gertrude and the rest. I am no one’s wife. Let it be me.”
Augustine looked at her with curious scrutiny, measuring her from head to foot, as it were; while Miss Susan, horror-stricken at once by the discussion and the indecorum, looked on breathless. Then Augustine turned away.
“_You_ could not be Herbert’s wife,” she said, with her usual abstract quiet; and added softly, “I must ask for enlightenment. I shall speak to my people at the almshouses to-morrow. We have done so much. His life has been given to us; why not the family salvation too?”
“These are questions which had better not be discussed at the dinner-table,” said Miss Susan; “a place where in England we don’t think it right to indulge in expressions of feeling. Madame Jean, I am afraid you are surprised by my sister’s ways. In the family we all know what she means exactly; but outside the family--”
“I am one of the family,” said Giovanna, leaning back in her chair, on which she had reseated herself. She put up her hands, and clasped them behind her head in an attitude which was of the easiest and freest description. “I eat no more, thank you, take it away; though the cuisine is better than my belle mère’s, bon papa; but I cannot eat forever, like you English. Oh, I am one of the family. I understand also, and I think--there are many things that come into my head.”
Miss Susan gave her a look which was full of fright and dislike, but not of understanding. Everard only thought he caught for a moment the gleam of sudden malicious meaning in her eyes. She laughed a low laugh, and looked at him across the table, yawning and stretching her arms, which were hidden by her black sleeves, but which Everard divined to be beautiful ones, somewhat large, but fine and shapely. His eyes sought hers half unwillingly, attracted in spite of himself. How full of life and youth and warmth and force she looked among all these old people! Even her careless gestures, her want of breeding, over which Stevens was groaning, seemed to make it more evident; and he thought to himself, with a shudder, that he understood what was in her eye.