She nodded.  Her own intention was to start at dusk for Threlfall.

“Why are you going away?” said Felicia suddenly.

He turned to her courteously: 

“To try to straighten your affairs!”

“That won’t do us any good—­to go away.”  Her voice was shrill, her black eyes frowned.  “We shan’t know what to do—­by ourselves.”

“And it’s precisely because I also don’t know exactly what to do next, that I’m going to town.  We must get some advice—­from the lawyers.”

“I hate lawyers!” The girl flushed angrily.  “I went to one in Lucca once—­we wanted a paper drawn up.  Mamma was ill.  I had to go by myself.  He was a brute!”

“Oh, my old lawyer is not a brute,” said Tatham, laughing.  “He’s a jolly old chap.”

“The man in Lucca was a horrid brute!” repeated Felicia.  “He wanted to kiss me!  There was a vase of flowers standing on his desk.  I threw them at him.  It cut him.  I was so glad!  His forehead began to bleed, and the water ran down from his hair.  He looked so ugly and silly!  I walked all the way home up the mountains, and when I got home I fainted.  We never went to that man again.”

“I should think not!” exclaimed Tatham, with disgust.  For the first time he looked at her attentively.  An English girl would not have told him that story in the same frank, upstanding way.  But this little elfish creature, with her blazing eyes, friendless and penniless in the world, had probably been exposed to experiences the English girl would know nothing of.  He did not like to think of them.  That beast, her father!

He was going away, when Felicia said, her curly head a little on one side, her tone low and beguiling: 

“When you come back, will you teach me to ride?  Lady Tatham said—­perhaps—­”

Tatham was embarrassed—­and bored—­by the request.

“I have no doubt we can find you a pony,” he said evasively, and taking up the Bradshaw he walked away.

Felicia stood alone and motionless in the big hall, amid its Gainsboroughs and Romneys, its splendid cabinets and tapestries, a childish figure in a blue dress, with crimson cheeks, and compressed lips.  Suddenly she ran up to a mirror on the wall, and looked at herself vindictively.

“It is because you are so ugly,” she said to the image in the glass.  “Ugh, you are so ugly!  And yet I can’t have yellow hair like that other girl.  If I dyed it, he would know—­he would laugh.  And she is all round and soft; but my bones are all sticking out!  I might be cut out of wood.  Ah”—­her wild smile broke out—­“I know what I’ll do!  I’ll drink panna—­cream they call it here.  Every night at tea they bring in what would cost a lira in Florence.  I’ll drink a whole cup of it!—­I’ll eat pounds of butter—­and lots, lots of pudding—­that’s what makes English people fat.  I’ll be fat too.  You’ll see!” And she threw a threatening nod at the scarecrow reflected in the tortoise-shell mirror.