“Do you invite me to tea?” he asked Rose, when Francesca had gone.

“Of course.  It’s your house.”

“It isn’t.  It’s yours.”

“Till Monday week,” she smiled.

“Come and show me all the views,” he said eagerly; and it was plain, even to the self-depreciatory Rose, that she did not bore Mr. Briggs.

Chapter 18

They had a very pleasant walk, with a great deal of sitting down in warm, thyme-fragrant corners, and if anything could have helped Rose to recover from the bitter disappointment of the morning it would have been the company and conversation of Mr. Briggs.  He did help her to recover, and the same process took place as that which Lotty had undergone with her husband, and the more Mr. Briggs thought Rose charming the more charming she became.

Briggs was a man incapable of concealments, who never lost time if he could help it.  They had not got to the end of the headland where the lighthouse is—­Briggs asked her to show him the lighthouse, because the path to it, he knew, was wide enough for two to walk abreast and fairly level—­before he had told her of the impression she made on him in London.

Since even the most religious, sober women like to know they have made an impression, particularly the kind that has nothing to do with character or merits, Rose was pleased.  Being pleased, she smiled.  Smiling, she was more attractive than ever.  Colour came into her cheeks, and brightness into her eyes.  She heard herself saying things that really sounded quite interesting and even amusing.  If Frederick were listening now, she thought, perhaps he would see that she couldn’t after all be such a hopeless bore; for here was a man, nice-looking, young, and surely clever—­he seemed clever, and she hoped he was, for then the compliment would be still greater—­who was evidently quite happy to spend the afternoon just talking to her.

And indeed Mr. Briggs seemed very much interested.  He wanted to hear all about everything she had been doing from the moment she got there.  He asked her if she had seen this, that, and the other in the house, what she liked best, which room she had, if she were comfortable, if Francesca was behaving, if Domenico took care of her, and whether she didn’t enjoy using the yellow sitting-room—­the one that got all the sun and looked out towards Genoa.

Rose was ashamed how little she had noticed in the house, and how few of the things he spoke of as curious or beautiful in it she had even seen.  Swamped in thought of Frederick, she appeared to have lived in San Salvatore blindly, and more than half the time had gone, and what had been the good of it?  She might just as well have been sitting hankering on Hampstead Heath.  No, she mightn’t; through all her hankerings she had been conscious that she was at least in the very heart of beauty; and indeed it was this beauty, this longing to share it, that had first started her off hankering.