Manisty fidgeted.

'Well, I hardly think that's necessary. It's a great pity she should miss Vallombrosa. I hoped I might settle her and Aunt Pattie there by about the middle of June.'

Eleanor made so sudden a movement that her book fell to the ground.

'You are going to Vallombrosa? I thought you were due at home, the beginning of June?'

'That was when I thought the book was coming out before the end of the month. But now--

'Now that it isn't coming out at all, you feel there's no hurry?'

Manisty looked annoyed.

'I don't think that's a fair shot. Of course the book's coming out! But if it isn't June, it must be October. So there's no hurry.'

The little cold laugh with which Eleanor had spoken her last words subsided. But she gave him no sign of a.s.sent. He pulled a stalk of gra.s.s, and nibbled at it uncomfortably.

'You think I'm a person easily discouraged?' he said presently.

'You take advice so oddly,' she said, smiling; 'sometimes so ill--sometimes so desperately well.'

'I can't help it. I am made like that. When a man begins to criticise my work, I first hate him--then I'm all of his opinion--only more so.'

'I know,' said Eleanor impatiently. 'It's this dreadful modern humility--the abominable power we all have of seeing the other side. But an author is no good till he has thrown his critics out of window.'

'Poor Neal!' said Manisty, with his broad sudden smile, 'he would fall hard. However, to return to Miss Foster. There's no need to drive her away if we look after her. You'll help us, won't you, Eleanor?'

He sat down on a stone bench beside her. The momentary cloud had cleared away. He was his most charming, most handsome self. A shiver ran through Eleanor. Her thought flew to yesterday--compared the kind radiance of the face beside her, its look of brotherly confidence and appeal, with the look of yesterday, the hard evasiveness with which he had met all her poor woman's attempts to renew the old intimacy, reknit the old bond. She thought of the solitary, sleepless misery of the night she had just pa.s.sed through. And here they were, sitting in cousinly talk, as though nothing else were between them but this polite anxiety for Miss Foster's peace of mind! What was behind that apparently frank brow--those sparkling grey-blue eyes? Manisty could always be a mystery when he chose, even to those who knew him best.

She drew a long inward breath, feeling the old inexorable compulsion that lies upon the decent woman, who can only play the game as the man chooses to set it.

'I don't know what I can do--' she said slowly. 'You think Alice is no better?'

Manisty shook his head. He looked at her sharply and doubtfully, as though measuring her--and then said, lowering his voice:

'I believe--I know I can trust you with this--I have some reason to suppose that there was an attempt at suicide at Venice. Her maid prevented it, and gave me the hint. I am in communication with the maid--though Alice has no idea of it.

'Ought she to come here at all?' said Eleanor after a pause.

'I have thought of that--of meeting all the trains and turning her back.

But you know her obstinacy. As long as she is in Rome and we here, we can't protect ourselves and the villa. There are a thousand ways of invading us.

Better let her come--find out what she wants--pacify her if possible--and send her away. I am not afraid for ourselves, you included, Eleanor! She would do us no harm. A short annoyance--and it would be over. But Miss Foster is the weak point.'

Eleanor looked at him inquiringly.

'It is one of the strongest signs of her unsound state,' said Manisty, frowning--'her wild fancies that she takes for girls much younger than herself. There have been all sorts of difficulties in hotels. She will be absolutely silent with older people--or with you and me, for instance--but if she can captivate any quite young creature, she will pour herself out to her, follow her, write to her, tease her.--Poor, poor Alice!'

Manisty's voice had become almost a groan. His look betrayed a true and manly feeling.

'One must always remember,' he resumed, 'that she has still the power to attract a stranger. Her mind is in ruins--but they are the ruins of what was once fine and n.o.ble. But it is all so wild, and strange, and desperate.

A girl is first fascinated--and then terrified. She begins by listening, and pitying--then Alice pursues her, swears her to secrecy, talks to her of enemies and persecutors, of persons who wish her death, who open her letters, and dog her footsteps--till the girl can't sleep at nights, and her own nerve begins to fail her. There was a case of this at Florence last year. Dalgetty, that's the maid, had to carry Alice off by main force. The parents of the girl threatened to set the doctors in motion--to get Alice sent to an asylum.'

'But surely, surely,' cried Mrs. Burgoyne, 'that would be the right course!'

Manisty shook his head.

'Impossible!' he said with energy. 'Don't imagine that my lawyers and I haven't looked into everything. Unless the disease has made much progress since I last saw her, Alice will always baffle any attempts to put her in restraint. She is queer--eccentric--melancholy; she envelopes the people she victimises with a kind of moral poison; but you can't _prove_--so far, at least--that she is dangerous to herself or others. The evidence always falls short.' He paused; then added with cautious emphasis: 'I don't speak without book. It has been tried.'

'But the attempt at Venice?'

'No good. The maid's letter convinced me of two things--first, that she had attempted her life, and next, that there is no proof of it.'

Eleanor bent forward.

'And the suitor--the man?'

'Dalgetty tells me there have been two interviews. The first at Venice--probably connected with the attempt we know of. The second some weeks ago at Padua. I believe the man to be a reputable person, though no doubt not insensible to the fact that Alice has some money. You know who he is?--a French artist she came across in Venice. He is melancholy and lonely like herself. I believe he is genuinely attached to her. But after the last scene at Padua she told Dalgetty that she would never make him miserable by marrying him.'

'What do you suppose she is coming here for?'

'Very likely to get me to do something for this man. She won't be his wife, but she likes to be his Providence: I shall promise anything, in return for her going quickly back to Venice--or Switzerland--where she often spends the summer. So long as she and Miss Foster are under one roof, I shall not have a moment free from anxiety.'

Eleanor sank back in her chair. She was silent; but her eye betrayed the bitter animation of the thoughts pa.s.sing behind them, thoughts evoked not so much by what Manisty had said, as by what he had _not_ said. All alarm, all consideration to be concentrated on one point?--nothing, and no one else, to matter?

But again she fought down the rising agony, refused to be mastered by it, or to believe her own terrors. Another wave of feeling rose. It was so natural to her to love and help him!

'Well, of course I shall do what you tell me! I generally do--don't I? What are your commands?'

He brought his head nearer to hers, his brilliant eyes bent upon her intently:

'Never let her be alone with Miss Foster! Watch her. If you see any sign of persecution--if you can't check it--let me know at once. I shall keep Alice in play of course. One day we can send Miss Foster into Rome--perhaps two.

Ah! hush!--here she comes!'

Eleanor looked round. Lucy had just appeared in the cool darkness of the avenue. She walked slowly and with a languid grace, trailing her white skirts. The shy rusticity, the frank robustness of her earlier aspect were now either gone, or temporarily merged in something more exquisite and more appealing. Her youth too had never been so apparent. She had been too strong too self-reliant. The touch of physical delicacy seemed to have brought back the child.

Then, turning back to her companion, Eleanor saw the sudden softness in Manisty's face--the alert expectancy of his att.i.tude.

'What a wonderful oval of the head and cheek!' he said under his breath, half to himself, half to her. 'Do you know, Eleanor, what she reminds me of?'

Eleanor shook her head.

'Of that little head--little face rather--that I gave you at Nemi. Don't you see it?'

'I always said she was like your Greek bust,' said Eleanor slowly.

'Ah, that was in her first archaic stage. But now that she's more at ease with us--you see?--there's the purity of line just the same--but subtilised--humanised--somehow! It's the change from marble to terra-cotta, isn't it?'

His fancy pleased him, and his smile turned to hers for sympathy. Then, springing up, he went to meet Lucy.