The Return.
BIANCA was beautiful—regular-featured, pale-skinned yet tanned by the Tuscan sun to the golden colour of a tea-rose—fair-haired among the other dark girls— and with a body perfect in its grace like some statue of ancient times. She was one among several brothers and sisters, all quite ordinary looking ; and they lived on a farm beyond the little Tuscan village on the hill. They all worked hard except Bianca : she was always the lazy one. She thought of nothing but herself, and most of her time was spent in studying her own features in a little pocket mirror. On the days of festas she powdered her face till its beauty was spoiled, and dressed herself in a cheap imitation of the latest fashion, but on an ordinary day, in a faded lilac dress with low-cut neck and bare arms, idling among the grey-green olives she made a picture that many an artist would have been glad to paint.
Her father, a dour and taciturn Tuscan, grumbled at her as she lazed away the hours, leaning against a tree, a scarlet poppy in her mouth, while her brothers and sisters bent over their work, gathering in the corn, or cutting grass on the steep terraces ; none of her family were very fond of her except one, a little brown sister, aptly named Bruna. To Bruna she confided all that was in her shallow little mind, and Bruna listened, wide-eyed. She adored Bianca.
"I don't want to stay here for ever," said Bianca. "I want to be a Signora, to be rich and travel, and wear beau- tiful dresses. I am beautiful—I know it. You will sec I was not meant to work on a farm all my life ; my destiny will take me far away from this stupid village. Then I shall come back in a few years on a visit, wearing a silk dress and everyone will say : 'There is the beautiful Bianca, now a rich Signora.'" Bruna looked thoughtful. "It would certainly be very nice. But how will you get away, Bianca ? "
"Oh, that will happen of itself. I shall marry some man who will make money. I shan't be in a hurry to marry any of these stupids."
Bianca was seventeen then, and had already more than one offer of marriage. During the next two years she had others, but she tossed her head and refused them all. Her two elder sisters married peasants, and Brune, also had an admirer, a handsome youth. Bruna was very shy and quiet ; on Sundays she would walk sedately down the lane with Giorgio, but never far out of sight of her father's home. Bianca teased her about her " old-fashioned " ways. Like a brilliant butterfly she ffitted about with her laughing face, till Giorgio neglected his little quiet sweetheart and grew mad with passion for her. Bruna • sorrowed but bore no malice, for she found it natural that he should leave her for her pretty sister.
Then came on the scene at last the rich young man of Bianca's dreams. The son of village people, he had become a brilliant chemist and inventor and was _already making money. He was spending a few _months with his parents before sailing for America to take a highly-paid post. Here was the right man for a husband ! And Bianca would have nothing more to do with Giorgio, but kept her smiles for the man she had marked out for herself. He fell in love with her, and they were married within two months and sailed for America.
"Don't cry, Bruna; you will see me again in a few years. I'll come back, in a silk dress, and show people how I look as a Signora ! " - And she left them with a last teasing laugh, to sail across the ocean to a new world.
Bruna was now the only daughter left on the farm : she worked from dawn till evening, her face brown as a berry, her dark eyes large and sad: Her Giorgio had left the village. There seemed no bright future in store for her, the days passed by monotonously, till she married a poor farmer who had a tiny house and a small piece of ground high among the hills. Within a year a baby was born, and next year another. She led a hard life ; they were very poor, so poor that they had barely enough to eat, and all day long she had to work, besides looking after her children. In winter they suffered from the cold on the bleak hill-side, their poor hands covered with chilblains. However, the children, two fine boys, throve, and when the Tuscan sun blazed down in spring they forgot the miseries of winter. Now and again a letter came from Bianca telling of the joys of town life, the dances, the dresses, though there was an under-current of dissatis- faction in all she wrote. Perhaps she was finding it was not enough to wear fine clothes to become a "Signora." The truth was that Bianca never felt quite at home among her smart friends. She never expressed any longing to see her sister again, but she did long to return and flaunt her wealth in the eyes of the village. Sometimes Bruna felt a pang of envy—Bianca had so much, and she had such a hard life. At last Bianca wrote that she was coming home.
"She will laugh and scorn me and my poor house," thought Bruna. "She will tease and despise me, my beautiful Bianca, who has everything, and I shall have to meet her in my old faded dress and my wood-patched shoes. She will come, I know, wearing a white silk dress, as she always said she would."
But Bianca died, after a few days' illness, in Chicago. Her husband, grief-stricken, had her body embalmed and brought back to the Tuscan village. She had longed to come back, and he felt that she would wish to be buried in her native soil. For a week she lay in the church, and people came from far and near to look upon her still beauty. Bruna walked there, one baby on her arm, the other child toddling beside her, and stood for a long time beside the coffin, a thin little figure in faded brown, weeping for the sister who had treated her with heartless contempt, - who had stolen her first lover from her, laughing.
Bianca wore a white silk dress, but of what avail was it ?
Bruna turned away with a sigh as the toddling child began to get impatient, stepped out of the dark cold church into the blazing sunlight, and started up the steep hill for home.
ANN SHEPHERD.
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