"
"Do you speak Italian?"
"No," said Rose. "Why?"
On that he turned to Francesca, and told her at a great rate, for
in Italian he was glib, to go back to the Signora in the top garden and
tell her he had encountered his old friend the Signora Arbuthnot, and
was going for a walk with her and would present himself to her later.
"Do you invite me to tea?" he asked Rose, when Francesca had
gone.
"Of course. It's your house."
"It isn't. It's yours."
"Till Monday week," she smiled.
"Come and show me all the views," he said eagerly; and it was
plain, even to the self-depreciatory Rose, that she did not bore Mr.
Briggs.
Chapter 18
They had a very pleasant walk, with a great deal of sitting down
in warm, thyme-fragrant corners, and if anything could have helped Rose
to recover from the bitter disappointment of the morning it would have
been the company and conversation of Mr. Briggs. He did help her to
recover, and the same process took place as that which Lotty had
undergone with her husband, and the more Mr. Briggs thought Rose
charming the more charming she became.
Briggs was a man incapable of concealments, who never lost time
if he could help it. They had not got to the end of the headland where
the lighthouse is--Briggs asked her to show him the lighthouse, because
the path to it, he knew, was wide enough for two to walk abreast and
fairly level--before he had told her of the impression she made on him
in London.
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