Lucy fidgetted a little as she stood by the dressing-table, took up one knick-knack after another and put it down. At last she said--

'Do you mind my asking you a question?'

Mrs. Burgoyne turned in surprise.

'By all means!--What can I do?'

'Do you mind telling me whether you think I ought to stay on here? Miss Manisty is so kind--she wants me to stay till you leave, and then go to Vallombrosa with you--next month. But--'

'Why "but"?'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, briskly, still in quest of rings, handkerchief, and fan,--'unless you are quite tired of us.'

The girl smiled. 'I couldn't be that. But--I think you'll be tired of me!

And I've heard from the Porters of a quiet pension in Florence, where some friends of theirs will be staying till the middle of June. They would let me join them, till the Porters are ready for me.'

There was just a moment's pause before Eleanor said--

'Aunt Pattie would be very sorry. I know she counts on your going with her to Vallombrosa. I must go home by the beginning of June, and I believe Mr.

Manisty goes to Paris.'

'And the book?' Lucy could not help saying, and then wished vehemently that she had left the question alone.

'I don't understand'--said Mrs. Burgoyne, stooping to look for her walking-shoes.

'I didn't--I didn't know whether it was still to be finished by the summer?'

'No one knows,--certainly not the author! But it doesn't concern me in the least.'

'How can it be finished without you?' said Lucy wondering. Again she could not restrain the spirit of eager championship which had arisen in her mind of late; though she was tremulously uncertain as to how far she might express it.

Certainly Mrs. Burgoyne showed a slight stiffening of manner.

'It will have to get finished without me, I'm afraid. Luckily I'm not wanted; but if I were, I shall have no time for anything but my father this summer.'

Lucy was silent. Mrs. Burgoyne finished tying her shoes, then rose, and said lightly--

'Besides--poor book! It wanted a change badly. So did I.--Now Mr. Neal will see it through.'

Lucy went to say good-bye to Aunt Pattie before starting. Eleanor, left alone, stood a moment, thoughtful, beside the dressing-table.

'She is sorry for me!' she said to herself, with a sudden, pa.s.sionate movement.

This was the Nemi day--the day of festival, planned a fortnight before, to celebrate the end, the happy end of the book. It was to have been Eleanor's special day--the sign and seal of that good fortune she had brought her cousin and his work.

And now?--Why were they going? Eleanor hardly knew. She had tried to stop it. But Reggie Brooklyn had been asked, and the Amba.s.sador's daughter. And Vanbrugh Neal had a fancy to see Nemi. Manisty, who had forgotten all that the day was once to signify, had resigned himself to the expedition--he who hated expeditions!--' because Neal wanted it.' There had not been a word said about it during the last few days that had not brought gall and wound to Eleanor. She, who thought she knew all that male selfishness was capable of, was yet surprised and p.r.i.c.ked anew, hour after hour, by Manisty's casual sayings and a.s.sumptions.

It was like some gourd-growth in the night--the rise of this entangling barrier between herself and him. She knew that some of it came from those secret superst.i.tions and fancies about himself and his work which she had often detected in him. If a companion or a place, even a particular table or pen had brought him luck, he would recur to them and repeat them with eagerness. But once prove to him the contrary, and she had seen him drop friend and pen with equal decision.

And as far as she could gather--as far as he would discuss the matter at all--it was precisely with regard to those portions of the book where her influence upon it had been strongest, that the difficulties put forward by Mr. Neal had arisen.

Her lip quivered. She had little or no personal conceit. Very likely Mr.

Neal's criticisms were altogether just, and she had counselled wrongly.

When she thought of the old days of happy consultation, of that vibrating sympathy of thought which had arisen between them, glorifying the winter days in Rome, of the thousand signs in him of a deep, personal grat.i.tude and affection--

Vanished!--vanished! The soreness of heart she carried about with her, proudly concealed, had the gnawing constancy of physical pain.

While he!--Nothing seemed to her more amazing than the lapses in mere gentlemanliness that Manisty could allow himself. He was capable on occasion of all that was most refined and tender in feeling. But once jar that central egotism of his, and he could behave incredibly! Through the small actions and omissions of every day, he could express, if he chose, a hardness of soul before which the woman shuddered.

Did he in truth mean her to understand, not only that she had been an intruder, and an unlucky one, upon his work and his intellectual life, but that any dearer hopes she might have based upon their comradeship were to be once for all abandoned? She stood there, lost in a sudden tumult of pa.s.sionate pride and misery, which was crossed every now and then by a strange and bitter wonder.

Each of us carries about with him a certain mental image of himself--typical, characteristic--as we suppose; draped at any rate to our fancy; round which we group the incidents of life. Eleanor saw herself always as the proud woman; it is a guise in which we are none of us loth to masquerade. Haughtily dumb and patient during her married years; proud morally, socially, intellectually; finding in this stiffening of the self her only defence against the ugly realities of daily life. Proud too in her loneliness and grief--proud of her very grief, of her very capacity for suffering, of all the delicate shades of thought and sorrow which furnished the matter of her secret life, lived without a sign beside the old father whose coa.r.s.er and commoner pride took such small account of hers!

And now--she seemed to herself to be already drinking humiliation, and foreseeing ever deeper draughts of it to come. She, who had never begged for anything, was in the mood to see her whole existence as a refused pet.i.tion, a rejected gift. She had offered Edward Manisty her all of sympathy and intelligence, and he was throwing it back lightly, inexorably upon her hands. Her thin cheek burnt; but it was the truth. She annoyed and wearied him; and he had shaken her off; her, Eleanor Burgoyne! She did not know herself. Her inmost sense of ident.i.ty was shaken.

She leant her head an instant against the frame of the open window, closing her tired eyes upon the great Campagna below her. A surge of rebellious will pa.s.sed through her. Always submission, patience, silence,--till now!

But there are moments when a woman must rouse herself, and fight--must not accept, but make, her fate.

Jealous! Was that last heat and ignominy of the soul to be hers too? She was to find it a threat and offence that he should spend some of the evenings that now went so heavily, talking with this girl,--this nice simple girl, whom she had herself bade him cultivate, whom she had herself brought into notice, rubbing off her angles,--drilling her into beauty? The very notion was madness and absurdity. It degraded her in her own eyes. It was the measure of her own self-ignorance. She--resign him at the first threat of another claim! The pa.s.sionate life of her own heart amazed and stunned her.

The clock in the salon struck. She started, and went to straighten her veil at the gla.s.s. What would the afternoon bring her? Something it should bring her. The Nemi days of the winter were shrined in memory--each with its halo. Let her put out her full strength again, and now, before it was too late--before he had slipped too far away from her.

The poor heart beat hotly against the lace of her dress. What did she intend or hope for? She only knew that this might be one of her last chances with him--that the days were running out--and the moment of separation approached. Her whole nature was athirst, desperately athirst for she knew not what. Yet something told her that among these ups and downs of daily temper and fortune there lay strewn for her the last chances of her life.

'Please, ma'am, will you go in for a moment to Miss Manisty?'

The voice was Benson's, who had waylaid Mrs. Burgoyne in the salon.

Eleanor obeyed.

From the shadows of her dark room Aunt Pattie raised a wan face.

'Eleanor!--what do you think?'--

Eleanor ran to her. Miss Manisty handed her a telegram which read as follows--

'Your letter arrived too late to alter arrangements. Coming to-morrow--two or three nights--discuss plans.--ALICE.'

Eleanor let her hand drop, and the two ladies looked at each other in dismay.

'But you told her you couldn't receive her here?'

'Several times over. Edward will be in despair. How are we to have her here with Miss Foster? Her behaviour the last two months has been too extraordinary.'

Aunt Pattie fell back a languid little heap upon her pillows. Eleanor looked almost equally disconcerted.

'Have you told Edward?'