Colomba stammered a few words of thanks, and hastened after Miss Nevil’s maid, to make such changes in her toilet as were rendered necessary by a journey on horseback in the dust and heat.
When she re-entered the sitting-room, she paused in front of the colonel’s guns, which the hunters had left in a corner.
“What fine weapons,” said she. “Are they yours, brother?”
“No, they are the colonel’s English guns—and they are as good as they are handsome.”
“How much I wish you had one like them!” said Colomba.
“One of those three certainly does belong to della Rebbia,” exclaimed the colonel. “He really shoots almost too well! To-day he fired fourteen shots, and brought down fourteen head of game.”
A friendly dispute at once ensued, in which Orso was vanquished, to his sister’s great satisfaction, as it was easy to perceive from the childish expression of delight which illumined her face, so serious a moment before.
“Choose, my dear fellow,” said the colonel; but Orso refused.
“Very well, then. Your sister shall choose for you.”
Colomba did not wait for a second invitation. She took up the plainest of the guns, but it was a first-rate Manton of large calibre.
“This one,” she said, “must carry a ball a long distance.”
Her brother was growing quite confused in his expressions of gratitude, when dinner appeared, very opportunely, to help him out of his embarrassment.
Miss Lydia was delighted to notice that Colomba, who had shown considerable reluctance to sit down with them, and had yielded only at a glance from her brother, crossed herself, like a good Catholic, before she began to eat.
“Good!” said she to herself, “that is primitive!” and she anticipated acquiring many interesting facts by observing this youthful representative of ancient Corsican manners. As for Orso, he was evidently a trifle uneasy, fearing, doubtless, that his sister might say or do something which savoured too much of her native village. But Colomba watched him constantly, and regulated all her own movements by his. Sometimes she looked at him fixedly, with a strange expression of sadness, and then, if Orso’s eyes met hers, he was the first to turn them away, as though he would evade some question which his sister was mentally addressing to him, the sense of which he understood only too well. Everybody talked French, for the colonel could only express himself very badly in Italian. Colomba understood French, and even pronounced the few words she was obliged to exchange with her entertainers tolerably well.
After dinner, the colonel, who had noticed the sort of constraint which existed between the brother and sister, inquired of Orso, with his customary frankness, whether he did not wish to be alone with Mademoiselle Colomba, offering, in that case, to go into the next room with his daughter. But Orso hastened to thank him, and to assure him they would have plenty of time to talk at Pietranera—this was the name of the village where he was to take up his abode.