s
Friday, and Jean is coming to see you on Wednesday."

CHAPTER XI

Olive told herself that Hilaire was very good to her in the days that
followed. He came sometimes into the room where she was, to find her
sitting on the floor amid the piles of books she was trying to reduce
to some kind of order.

"You do not get tired? I am afraid they are rather dusty."

"Oh, not at all," she assured him. She was swathed in a blue linen
apron of Marietta's and had tied a cotton handkerchief over her hair.
"I like to feel I am doing something for you," she said. "I wish--you
have been--you are so kind."

On the Wednesday morning she covered some of the books with brown
paper and pasted labels on their backs. She tried not to listen for
the creaking of the great gates as they swung open, for the grating of
wheels against the stones, for Jean's voice calling to his brother,
for his quick step upon the stair, but she heard all as she wrote
_Vita Nuova_ on the slip intended for an early edition of the _Rape of
the Lock_, and put the _Decameron_ aside with some sermons and
commentaries that were to be classified as devotional literature. He
did not come to her then, but she was desperately afraid that he
might. "I am not ready ... not ..."

When, later, she came into the dining-room she seemed to be perfectly
at her ease. Jean's eyes had been fixed on the door, and they met hers
eagerly as she came forward. "Are you better?" he asked, and then bit
his lip, thinking he had said the wrong thing.

"Oh, yes. But--but you look pale and thinner."

Her little air of gay indifference fell away from her. As he still
held her hand she felt the tears coming and longed to be able to run
upstairs and take some more sal volatile, but Hilaire came to the
rescue.

"Well, let's have lunch," he said. "I hate tepid food."

When they had taken their places Jean gave the girl a letter.

"It came for you to the Lorenzoni. I called at the porter's lodge this
morning and Ser Gigia gave it me."

"Such a waste of good things I never saw," the butler said afterwards
to his wife. "As you know, the _padrone_ never eats more than enough
to fill a bird, but I have seen the signorino hungry, and the young
lady too. To-day, however, they ate nothing, though the _frittata_ was
fit to melt in one's mouth. I should not have been ashamed to set it
before the Archangel Gabriel, and he would have eaten it, since it is
certain that the Blessed One has ne