登陆注册
15453300000081

第81章 XXXIV.(2)

She meant to write as soon as she heard from Mr. Hinkle, which could not be long now, for then she could be independent of the offers of help which she dreaded from Miss Milray, even more than from Mrs. Milray; it would be harder to refuse them; and she entered upon a passage of her life which a nature less simple would have found much more trying. But she had the power of taking everything as if it were as much to be expected as anything else. If nothing at all happened she accepted the situation with implicit resignation, and with a gayety of heart which availed her long, and never wholly left her.

While the suspense lasted she could not write home as frankly as before, and she sent off letters to Middlemount which treated of her delay in Venice with helpless reticence. They would have set another sort of household intolerably wondering and suspecting, but she had the comfort of knowing that her father would probably settle the whole matter by saying that she would tell what she meant when she got round to it; and apart from this she had mainly the comfort of the vice-consul's society.

He had little to do besides looking after her, and he employed himself about this in daily visits which the padrone and his wife regarded as official, and promoted with a serious respect for the vice-consular dignity. If the visits ended, as they often did, in a turn on the Grand Canal, and an ice in the Piazza, they appealed to the imagination of more sophisticated witnesses, who decided that the young American girl had inherited the millions of the sick lady, and become the betrothed of the vice-consul, and that they were thus passing the days of their engagement in conformity to the American custom, however much at variance with that of other civilizations.

This view of the affair was known to Maddalena, but not to Clementina, who in those days went back in many things to the tradition of her life at Middlemount. The vice-consul was of a tradition almost as simple, and his longer experience set no very wide interval between them. It quickly came to his telling her all about his dead wife and his married daughters, and how, after his home was broken up, he thought he would travel a little and see what that would do for him. He confessed that it had not done much; he was always homesick, and he was ready to go as soon as the President sent out a consul to take his job off his hands. He said that he had not enjoyed himself so much since he came to Venice as he was doing now, and that he did not know what he should do if Clementina first got her call home. He betrayed no curiosity as to the peculiar circumstances of her stay, but affected to regard it as something quite normal, and he watched over her in every way with a fatherly as well as an official vigilance which never degenerated into the semblance of any other feeling. Clementina rested in his care in entire security. The world had quite fallen from her, or so much of it as she had seen at Florence, and in her indifference she lapsed into life as it was in the time before that with a tender renewal of her allegiance to it. There was nothing in the conversation of the vice-consul to distract her from this; and she said and did the things at Venice that she used to do at Middlemount, as nearly as she could; to make the days of waiting pass more quickly, she tried to serve herself in ways that scandalized the proud affection of Maddalena. It was not fit for the signorina to make her bed or sweep her room; she might sew and knit if she would; but these other things were for servants like herself. She continued in the faith of Clementina's gentility, and saw her always as she had seen her first in the brief hour of her social splendor in Florence. Clementina tried to make her understand how she lived at Middlemount, but she only brought before Maddalena the humiliating image of a contadina, which she rejected not only in Clementina's behalf, but that of Miss Milray. She told her that she was laughing at her, and she was fixed in her belief when the girl laughed at that notion. Her poverty she easily conceived of; plenty of signorine in Italy were poor; and she protected her in it with the duty she did not divide quite evenly between her and the padrone.

The date which Clementina had fixed for hearing from Hinkle by cable had long passed, and the time when she first hoped to hear from him by letter had come and gone. Her address was with the vice-consul as Mrs. Lander's had been, and he could not be ignorant of her disappointment when he brought her letters which she said were from home. On the surface of things it could only be from home that she wished to hear, but beneath the surface he read an anxiety which mounted with each gratification of this wish. He had not seen much of the girl while Hinkle was in Venice;

Mrs. Lander had not begun to make such constant use of him until Hinkle had gone; Mrs. Milray had told him of Clementina's earlier romance, and it was to Gregory that the vice-consul related the anxiety which he knew as little in its nature as in its object.

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 重生之特工女皇归来

    重生之特工女皇归来

    在无穷的黑暗中,她回来了,带着滔天的恨意回来了……她像一枝染血的白玫瑰,变成了血玫瑰。复仇开始了,曾经负过她的人们,死神已经给你们下了请贴了……ps:可能写崩了,简介不用在意。更新很慢,这点我很抱歉。
  • 穿越红楼之青莲花开

    穿越红楼之青莲花开

    她本是一朵碧色的莲花,他本是冰冷无情的黑暗之王。为了她,他舍弃了自己的精血,那是生生的挖出心脏中最纯的一部分,从此他无心无情;她进入红楼只想报恩,最重要的却是保护自己的亲人,可是当俩人相遇,他霸道地将她锁在怀中,不容任何人碰触,也不容许她逃离;她渐渐地被感动,却又感到不安,究竟会发生什么呢?
  • 盗墓生涯之天机迷踪

    盗墓生涯之天机迷踪

    生命凋零的最终归宿,万年之前的远古,神话传说中的存在,埋葬于历史文明的真相,这是一个盗墓者的故事。诡异未知的迷局,白山黑水间的古墓,吴明一一挖掘,一步一步揭开真相的面纱。喜欢《盗墓笔记》和《鬼吹灯》的往这儿看。【感谢阅文书评团提供书评支持】
  • 我们的爱,没有悲伤

    我们的爱,没有悲伤

    夏暖:我们是不幸的,因为在那里,我们并没有完成白头偕老的誓言。我们是幸运的,因为在这里,我们会一生一世不分离。袁浩:谢谢你,跨越地平线,回到我身边,能够让我继续的守护着你。相爱的人会在一起,哪怕我们的距离是天与地,都要相信,月老为我们牵引的红线不会断。
  • 落难公主:Boos别追

    落难公主:Boos别追

    是个坑她,是一个就有双重魂魄的女孩,当另一个她来到这个世界,忘掉过去的记忆,可再次面对他们,她能否回想起那点点滴滴,又是否会重新接受?是坑误入
  • 伏魔道长

    伏魔道长

    那年高中退学,便回到老家干小本买卖。本以为会像其他人一样安居乐业的,却因为那柄鱼肠剑使我不得不走上伏魔之路……
  • 腹黑王爷:宠妃无极限

    腹黑王爷:宠妃无极限

    她,二十一世纪金牌杀手,穿越成了废柴三小姐,what?被欺凌?呵呵,反击,我才是老大;他,超级腹黑王爷,女人见他离三丈之外,却唯独对她宠爱至及………赶快入坑吧
  • 重生之萌妻逆袭

    重生之萌妻逆袭

    远远的有一辆自行车驶来,令人意外的是骑车子的竟然是个小男孩,大概十二三岁,后面坐着一个背着老式药箱的大夫。小菲看着这一切觉得很意外,没想到自己在死亡的最后一刻看到的竟然是自己8岁时,因为收谷子从平楼上掉下来的这一幕。。。。
  • 古剑缘:断罪花

    古剑缘:断罪花

    这是一片不详的土地,历史交迭,版图变迁,被上天诅咒的大陆之上,永远燃烧着猎猎烽火。当名将白了头发,美人凋尽朱颜,吟游诗人苍白的咏叹调里,早已写遍了烽火流离中的生死契阔以及情非得已。天长地久,难有尽时,神魔虽寿,终为土灰。情为砒霜,无常如戏,爱似荆棘,世人争拥。幽冥无泪,奈何有桥,苍生恨世,不堕轮回。枕剑长醉,恍若梦醒。——《解剑七叹》不开后宫只开挂,不装流氓只装逼,一心描写我心中的玄幻仙侠。
  • 呆萌师尊:捕获一只小狐狸

    呆萌师尊:捕获一只小狐狸

    穿越成狐,还遇到一个不靠谱的师父,呜呼哀哉,她时缘怎么就这么倒霉咧?虽然机缘巧合之下,修成人身,但是她的悲惨狐生也就从此开始,妖孽师尊天天调戏她,天天壁咚她,一言不合就吻,一言不合就……。“师父,你能不能有一点为人师表的样子,这是师徒恋诶,还有,人妖殊途啊!”“嗯?你说什么,我刚没听见。”“呃……师父,你就当我没说,你继续……”【我也不知道我会写成什么鬼,结局也没定好,到时候再看吧】