Colin felt sure by the faintness of her voice that there was something very serious the matter. ‘Minna dearest,’ he whispered to her half beneath his breath, ‘you aren’t well, I’m certain. I’ll send away my friend and my model, and then you must tell me all about it, like a dear good little woman.’
Minna started, and her face flushed suddenly again with mounting colour. ‘Your model,’ she cried, pointing half contemptuously towards the scowling Cecca. ‘Your model! Is that woman over there a model, then?’
‘Yes, certainly,’ Colin answered lightly.
‘This lady’s a model, Minna. We call her Cecca – that’s short for Francesca, you know – and she’s my model for a statue of a Spartan maiden I’m now working upon.’
But Cecca, though she couldn’t follow the words, had noticed the contemptuous tone and gesture with which Minna had scornfully spoken of ‘that woman,’ and she knew at once in her hot Italian heart that she stood face to face with a natural enemy. An enemy and a rival. For Cecca, too, had in her own way her small fancies and her bold ambitions.
‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?’ Hiram Winthrop put in timidly, for he saw with his keen glance that Cecca’s handsome face was growing every moment blacker and blacker, and he wanted to avert the coming explosion.
‘Well, not so very beautiful to my mind,’ Minna answered, with studied coolness, putting her head critically a little on one side, and staring at the model as if she had been made of plaster of Paris; ‘though I must say you gentlemen seemed to be admiring her immensely when I came into the room a minute or two ago. I confess she doesn’t exactly take my own personal fancy.’
‘What is the signorina saying?’ Cecca broke in haughtily, in Italian. She felt sure from the scornful tone of Minna’s voice that it must at least be something disparaging.
‘She says you are beautiful, Signora Cecca,’ Colin answered hurriedly, with a sidelong deprecatory glance at Minna. ‘Bella bella, bella, bellissima.’
‘Bellissima, si, bellissima,’ Minna echoed, half frightened, she knew not why; for she felt dimly conscious in her own little mind that they were all three thoroughly afraid in their hearts of the beautiful, imperious Italian woman.
‘It is a lie,’ Cecca murmured to herself quietly. 4 But it doesn’t matter. She was saying that she didn’t admire me, and the Englishman and the American tried to stop her. The sorceress! I hate her!’
CHAPTER XXXI. COUSINS
They stood all four looking at one another mutely for a few minutes longer, and then Colin broke the ominous silence by saying as politely as he was able, ‘Signora Cecca, this lady has come to see me from England, and we are relations. We have not met for many years. Will you excuse my dismissing you for this morning?’
Cecca made a queenly obeisance to Colin, dropped a sort of saucy Italian curtsey to Minna, nodded familiarly to Hiram, and swept out of the studio into the dressing-room without uttering another word.
‘She’ll go off to Bazzoni’s, I’m afraid,’ Hiram said, with a sigh of relief, as she shut the door noiselessly and cautiously behind her. ‘He’s downright anxious to get her, and she’s a touchy young woman, that’s certain.’
‘I’m not at all afraid of that,’ Colin answered, smiling; ‘she’s a great deal too true to me for any such tricks as those, I’m sure, Winthrop. She really likes me, I know, and she won’t desert me even for a pique, though I can easily see she’s awfully offended.’
‘Well, I hope so,’ Hiram replied gravely. ‘She’s far too good a model to be lost. Goodbye, Churchill. – Good morning, Miss Wroe. I hope you’ll do me the same honour as you’ve done your cousin, by coming to take a look some day around my studio.’
‘Well, Minna,’ Colin said as soon as they were alone, coming up to her and offering once more to kiss her – ‘why, little woman, what’s the matter? Aren’t you going to let me kiss you any longer? We always used to kiss one another in the old days, you know, in England.’
‘But now we’re both of us quite grown up, Colin,’ Minna answered, somewhat pettishly, ‘so of course that makes all the difference.’
Cohn couldn’t understand the meaning of this chilliness; for Minna’s late letters, written in the tremor of delight at the surprise she was preparing for him, had been more than usually affectionate; and it would never have entered into his head for a moment to suppose that she could have misinterpreted his remarks about Cecca, even if he had known that she had overheard them. To a sculptor, such criticism of a model, such enthusiasm for the mere form of the shapely human figure, seem so natural and disinterested, so much a necessary corollary of his art, that he never even dreams of guarding against any possible misapprehension. So Colin only bowed his head in silent wonder, and answered slowly, ‘But then you know, Minna, we’re cousins. Surely there can be no reason why cousins when they meet shouldn’t kiss one another.’ He couldn’t have chosen a worse plea at that particular moment; for as he said it, the blood rushed from Minna’s cheeks, and she trembled with excitement at that seeming knell to all her dearest expectations. ‘Oh, well, if you put it upon that ground, Colin,’ she faltered out half tearfully, ‘of course we may kiss one another – as cousins.’
Colin seized her in his arms at the word, and covered her pretty little gipsy face with a string of warm, eager kisses. Even little Minna, in her fright and anxiety, could not help imagining to herself that those were hardly what one could call in fairness mere everyday cousinly embraces. But her evil genius made her struggle to release herself, according to the code of etiquette which she had learnt as becoming from her friends and early companions; and she pushed Colin away after a moment’s doubtful acquiescence, with a little petulant gesture of half-affected anger. The philosophic observer may indeed note that among the English people only women of the very highest breeding know how to let themselves be kissed by their lovers with becoming and unresisting dignity. Tennyson’s Maud, when her cynic admirer kissed her for the first time, ‘took the kiss sedately.’ I fear it must be admitted that under the same circumstances Minna Wroe, dear little native-born lady though she was, would have felt it incumbent upon her as a woman and a maiden to resist and struggle to the utmost of her power.
As for Colin, having got rid of that first resistance easily enough, he soon settled in his own mind to his own entire satisfaction that Minna had been only a little shy of him after so long an absence, and had perhaps been playing off a sort of mock-modest coyness upon him, in order to rouse him to an effective aggression. So he said no more to her about the matter, but asked her full particulars as to her new position and her journey; and even Minna herself, disappointed as she was, could not help opening out her full heart to dear old Colin, and telling him all about everything that had happened to her in the last six weeks, except her inner hopes and fears and lamentations. Yes, she had come to Rome to live – she didn’t say ‘on purpose to be near you, Colin’ – and they would have abundant opportunities of seeing one another frequently; and Madame was very kind, for an employer, you know – as employers go – you can’t expect much, of course, from an employer. And Colin showed her all his busts and statues; and Minna admired them profoundly with a genuine admiration. And then, what prices he got for them! Why, Colin, really nowadays you’re become quite a gentleman! And Colin, to whom that social metamorphosis had long grown perfectly familiar, laughed heartily at the naïve remark and then looked round with a touch of professional suspicion, for fear some accidental patron might have happened to come in and overhear the simple little confession. Altogether, their conversation got very close and affectionate and cousinly.
At last, after they had talked about everything that most concerned them both, save only the one thing that concerned them both more than anything, Minna asked in as unconcerned a tone as she could muster up, ‘And this model, Colin – Cecca, I think you called her – what of her?’
Colin’s