United States or Guadeloupe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"I know how to tell Leo that I am here," Nina said, simply; and she went to the piano and opened it. Then, with the most exquisite softness, she began to play some familiar Neapolitan airs slowly and gently, so that they must have sounded in the sick-chamber like mere echoes of song coming from across wide waters. And would he not understand that it was Nina who was speaking to him; that she was only a few yards from him; and not the ghostly Nina who had so often come to the sick-room door and remained there strangely silent, but the wilful, gentle, capricious, warm-hearted cianciosella who had kissed his hand but a little while ago, and wept over it, amid her bitter sobs. These were love-songs for the most part that she was playing; but that was neither here nor there; the soft, rippling notes were more like the sound of a trickling waterfall in some still summer solitude. "Cannetella, oje Cannetè!" "Chello che tu me dice, Nenna, non boglio f
"Leo," she said, with proud lips, "he never called me 'Nenna mia' never! He dared not!" In another instant, he could see, there would have been protesting tears in her eyes; and even Mrs. Grey, who did not know the meaning of the familiar Neapolitan phrase, noticed the tremulous indignation in the girl's voice.
Yes, here was every one of them, from the enclasped loving-cup to the chance trinkets he had purchased for her just as they happened to attract his eye. He took them all out; there was no letter, no message of any kind. And then he asked himself, almost angrily, what sort of mad freak was this. Had the wayward and petulant Nina forgetting all the suave and gracious demeanor she had been teaching herself since she came to England had she run away in a fit of temper, breaking her engagement at the theatre, and causing alarm and anxiety to her friends, all about nothing? For he and she had not quarrelled in any way whatsoever, as far as he knew. One fancy, at least, never occurred to him or, if it occurred to him, it was dismissed in a moment that Nina might have had a secret lover; that she had honestly wished to return these presents before making an elopement. It was quite possible that Nicolo Ciana, if he had heard of Nina's success in England, might have pursued her, and sought to marry so very eligible a helpmeet; but if the young man with the greasy hair and the sham jewelry and the falsetto voice had really come to England, Lionel knew who would have been the first to bid him return to his native shores and his zuccherelli. Had not Nina indignantly denied that he had ever dared to address her as "Nenna mia," or that his perpetual "Antoniella, Antoni
Word Of The Day