CHAPTER XXIII

FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT

Vittoria slept on like an outworn child, while Giacinta nodded over her, and started, and wondered what embowelled mountain they might be passing through, so cold was the air and thick the darkness; and wondered more at the old face of dawn, which appeared to know nothing of her agitation.  But morning was better than night, and she ceased counting over her sins forward and backward; adding comments on them, excusing some and admitting the turpitude of others, with ’Oh!  I was naughty, padre mio!  I was naughty—­she huddled them all into one of memory’s spare sacks, and tied the neck of it, that they should keep safe for her father-confessor.  At such times, after a tumult of the blood, women have tender delight in one another’s beauty.  Giacinta doted on the marble cheek, upturned on her lap, with the black unbound locks slipping across it; the braid of the coronal of hair loosening; the chance flitting movement of the pearly little dimple that lay at the edge of the bow of the joined lips, like the cradling hollow of a dream.  At whiles it would twitch; yet the dear eyelids continued sealed.

Looking at shut eyelids when you love the eyes beneath, is more or less a teazing mystery that draws down your mouth to kiss them.  Their lashes seem to answer you in some way with infantine provocation; and fine eyelashes upon a face bent sideways, suggest a kind of internal smiling.  Giacinta looked till she could bear it no longer; she kissed the cheek, and crooned over it, gladdened by a sense of jealous possession when she thought of the adored thing her mistress had been overnight.  One of her hugs awoke Vittoria, who said, ‘Shut my window, mother,’ and slept again fast.  Giacinta saw that they were nearer to the mountains.  Mountain-shadows were thrown out, and long lank shadows of cypresses that climbed up reddish-yellow undulations, told of the sun coming.  The sun threw a blaze of light into the carriage.  He shone like a good friend, and helped Giacinta think, as she had already been disposed to imagine, that the machinery by which they had been caught out of Milan was amicable magic after all, and not to be screamed at.  The sound medicine of sleep and sunlight was restoring livelier colour to her mistress.  Giacinta hushed her now, but Vittoria’s eyes opened, and settled on her, full of repose.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

’Signorina, my own, I was thinking whether those people I see on the hill-sides are as fond of coffee as I am.’