o!_"

"Why does she do it?"

"Why does an ostrich bury its head in the sand? Why does a camel try
to get through the eye of a needle? (But perhaps he does not.) I often
tell her fat cannot be hidden, but she will not believe."

When Olive went into the _salotto_ a few minutes before seven she
found the family assembled. Signor Lucis rose from his place at
Gemma's side as the aunt uttered the introductory formula. He brought
his heels together and bowed stiffly from the waist, and when Olive
gave him her hand in English fashion he took it limply and held it for
a moment before he dropped it. His string-coloured moustache was
brushed up from a loose-lipped mouth, and he showed bad teeth when he
smiled.

"The signorina speaks Italian?"

"Oh, yes."

"Ah, does she come from London?"

"I had no settled home in England."

"Ah! The sun never shines there?"

She laughed. "Not as it does here," she admitted. "Where is my shoe?"

"It was yours then?" he said with an attempt at playfulness. "Gemma
has been quite jealous of the unknown owner, but she says it is much
larger than any of hers." The girls' eyes met but neither spoke, and
Orazio babbled on, unheeding: "Her feet are _carini_, and I can span
her ankle with my thumb and forefinger; but you are small made too,
signorina."

Carolina poked her head in at the door. "_Al suo comodo e pronto_,"
she said, referring to the dinner, and hurried away again to dish up
the veal cutlets.

The young man contrived to remain behind in the _salotto_ for a moment
and to keep Gemma with him. Olive looked at them as they took their
places at table, and she understood that the girl had had to submit to
some caress. She looked sick and her lips were quite white, and if
Lucis had been a man of quick perceptions he would have realised, her
face must have shown him, that she loathed him. He was dense, however,
and though he commented on her silence later on it was evident that he
attributed it to shyness.

Olive, thinking to do well, flung herself into the conversational
breach. Her cousins had nothing to say, and the aunt's thoughts were
set on the dinner and cumbered with much serving. So she talked to him
as in duty bound, and he seemed inclined to banter her.

Her feet, her temper, her relations with _vetturini_. He was
execrable, but she would not take offence.

After dinner they all sat in the little _salotto_ until it was time to
go to the theatre, and still Olive talked