style="font-size:15px;"> "Amelia," he begins suddenly, and even to himself his voice sounds discourteous and abrupt, "shall you want me this afternoon?"
The moment that the words are out of his mouth it strikes him that the form into which he has thrown his question is more than necessarily untender. She stops in the patting of Sybilla's smart pillows, and perhaps there is something a little abrupt too in her monosyllabic "Why?"
"Because," standing before the fireplace, with his back to the three women, and throwing the words over his shoulder, "because, if you do not, Byng and I were thinking of going to Certosa."
There is a pause. He hears that Cecilia's needles have stopped clicking; her work has dropped into her lap. In another moment she will have proposed to come too. "With the Le Marchants," he goes on, shooting out the fateful words like bullets; "a partie carrée."
Still silence behind him. He cannot go on staring for ever at the billets of wood of the unlit fire. He has to turn round and face his companions. The only one of them whose pleasure or displeasure in his announcement he at all heeds – Amelia – is stooping over Sybilla, rearranging in a high, picturesque tier behind the invalid's long back, three cushions, and her face is almost entirely hidden from him by her attitude.
"Of course if it is in the least inconvenient, if you have made any other plans for me – if, in fact, you want me," he continues in a tone that is at once apologetic and dogged.
"But I do not," cries she, answering at last, and with a distinct laugh in her voice, a laugh into whose quality he is not anxious too curiously to inquire. "You must not be so conceited as to think that I always want you! In point of fact, you could not have hit upon a day that suited me better. I am really rather 'throng' to-day, as they say in Yorkshire. I have quite a hundred things to do, and father wants me to help him to correct the proofs of his sermon, the sermon he preached at Mr. Moffat's church on the Holy Innocents' Day. He has been asked to publish it – is not that flattering? Poor father, I believe he will end by being a popular preacher – in fact" (laughing again), "the whole family is going up in the world!"
There is such a forced mirth in her tone that Jim feels much more guiltily uncomfortable than if she had treated him to hysterics or sulks. Nor does his satisfaction with himself increase, when, upon his rising to depart, she runs out of the room after him, to say to him, while her homely face twitches against her will, how much she hopes that he will enjoy himself; how perfectly happy she shall be without him; and how eagerly she shall look forward to hearing all about it from him to-morrow. "It will be almost better than going to Certosa herself," she ends.
But against the unnatural altitude of this last flight of abnegation nature revolts, and, becoming conscious of a break in her voice, she hastily retreats and gets back into the salon, in time to see Cecilia shaking her elaborate head, and to hear her remarking with slow emphasis, "Mark my words! There is something odd about those people, and it is not hysteria!"
With spirits sensibly worsened by his interview, Burgoyne returns to the Minerva, and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds that young gentleman stretched upon his bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and an open letter lying on the floor beside him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to notice anybody's gloom but his own.
"I came to ask at what hour we are to set off this afternoon?" he says with a sort of flat moroseness in his tone.
"We, indeed!" rejoins the other with a groan, and rolling over with a sort of petulance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly-smoothed pillow by burrowing his ruffled head in it – "we!"
There is such a heart-rent woe in the accent with which the last monosyllable is pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne has no other idea but that his young friend, too, has become aware of the "screw loose," has heard, perhaps in detail, that story from before whose ominous opening he himself had fled. The thought sends his heart into his throat, so as to render him incapable of asking an explanation of the other's affliction.
"We!" repeats Byng for the third time, and very indistinctly, as he is now lying entirely on his face.
"Why do you go on saying 'we' in that idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, recovering his voice – recovering it only to employ it in imitating the younger man's accents, in a manner which displays more exasperation than natural talent for mimicry. It is not a politely-worded inquiry, but it has the desired result of acting as a tonic on him at whom it is aimed, making him not only roll over once again, but actually sit up.
"Why do I say we?" repeats he, his young eyes looking lamentably out from under the fall of his tumbled hair – "because it is not we! it is you! You lucky dog, you will have her all to yourself!"
Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever may be the cause of his companion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently not what he had feared. There is, however, no evidence of relief or any other mild quality in his next remark.
"If you would talk less like an ass, I should have a better chance of knowing what you are driving at!"
The query seems only to renew and deepen the other's tribulation. He falls back into his former attitude.
"You will hold the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand!" he groans. "No, do not go" (with a sudden and startling change of tone, springing off the bed, as he becomes aware that his friend is making for the door, unable to bear those rhapsodies, whose full distastefulness to their hearer the utterer little conjectures). "I'll tell you! I'll explain. Why are you in such a deuce of a hurry? I cannot go to Certosa because I have just heard from my mother that she is to arrive to-day. She will be here in another hour."
Jim's fingers are already on the door handle, but this piece of news arrests him.
"Your mother? I did not know that she was coming abroad."
"No more did I!"
"It must have been a very sudden thought!"
"Very!"
"What a delightful surprise for you!"
"Delightful!" There is so ludicrous a discrepancy between the adjective and the accent with which it is rendered that Jim bursts into a bitter laugh.
"She would be flattered if she could see your elation at the prospect of meeting her!"
Byng's blood rushes up under his clear smooth skin at his friend's jeer, but he answers, with some dignity:
"I do not think you have any right to imply that I am not always glad to see my mother; I do not deny that, if it had been equally convenient to her, I had rather she should have come twenty-four hours later."
Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far too much false shame to confess it directly, and what he means for an amende, when it comes, is of an oblique nature.
"I think far the best plan will be to put off the excursion altogether; I am sure that I am not particularly keen about it."
The indignant red has rapidly died out of Byng's face; his placability being only to be surpassed by his slowness to take offence.
"Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of stupefaction; then, with a sudden tardy recollection of the rosy fetters in which his friend is held by another lady, he adds – "But, of course, you are not – I was forgetting!"
Jim winces.
"As it is your party, you had better send up a note at once to the Piazza d'Azeglio."
"No,
