Somewhat to Mrs. Meredith’s and also to Kyrle’s own surprise, he had no incivility to encounter from any of the Joscelyns when he joined their party on the Lido that afternoon. The heads of the family received him courteously, if stiffly, and Miss Joscelyn greeted him like an old friend. Indeed, by what means he could not for the life of him tell, she soon managed to monopolize his attention, calling upon him for the little services which no gentleman can refuse to render to a woman, and presently drawing him aside from the restof the party to walk with her on the beach, while she discoursed to him of many things in heaven and earth which did not interest him in the least. His judgment upon her, meanwhile, was uncompromising.
“A mass of silliness and affectation,” he said to himself, but in this he did her some injustice. She was not only less silly than he imagined—possessing, in fact, a good deal of shrewdness—but at the present time she had an object in view in her discursive conversation which his irritated and distracted mind was far from perceiving.
For it is to be feared that, had pearls of wit and wisdom dropped from her lips, they would have fallen on equally inattentive ears. Kyrle had said sternly to himself, while on his way to the Lido, that he would be very careful not to devote himself to Aimée; that, because she had asked him to remain in Venice, he was the more bound not to cause her the faintest shadow of annoyance by attentions that might be misconstrued; and that he would only allow himself the pleasure of seeing and of talking to her, as any other chance acquaintance might.But to renounce voluntarily some happiness for which Nature longs is one thing, and to have it forcibly placed beyond reach by outside agency is another. Even if the happiness in question is no more than looking into a pair of soft, dark eyes, and listening to ordinary sentences uttered in a sweet voice, one may be supported in voluntary renunciation by a sense of virtue which is altogether lacking in feeling that the matter is taken out of one’s own power. So Kyrle chafed inwardly against the quiet but resolute hold of Miss Joscelyn upon his attention, even while he said to himself that it was in a degree what he had intended, and that he was glad of an opportunity to prove to these people what an absurd fiction it was that he had ever been Aimée’s lover.
Yet all the time he was conscious of an insistent desire, the hunger of the heart which comes with love, to renew the charm of that half hour in theatriumof St. Mark’s, to take up the thread of conversation where they had dropped it, and feel again that sense of sympathy and comradeship, of understanding and being understood, which had quickened all hisbeing into new life. And, instead of this, he was pacing the beach with Lydia Joscelyn, and lending half an ear to what he called in his own mind empty twaddle.
Twaddle it might be, but empty—that is, devoid of meaning—it was not. Lydia, with an art which did her credit, approached slowly but surely to the point she had distinctly in view; and presently she touched it.
“Percy tells me that you sing beautifully, Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “He declares that he never heard anything finer than your singing in the gondola last night. You must come out with us to-night and let me hear you. I adore fine singing. I wonder that Aimée never mentioned that you had such a fine voice.”
Kyrle, roused from partial abstraction by the sound of Aimée’s name, fell unconsciously into the trap. “I do not think that Miss Vincent knew anything about my voice,” he replied, “so it would have been difficult for her to say anything about it.”
“No!” said his companion, opening her eyes. “I thought I had understood that you werequiteold friends.”
This roused him thoroughly, for the tone implied much more than the words. The indignation which was ever ready to be excited on this point rose within him, as it had risen before that day. He determined that nothing should induce him to lend his aid to Fanny Berrien’s deception, and allow these people to fancy injurious things of Aimée. Miss Joscelyn was a little startled by the haughtiness of his glance as he turned it on her.
“I could esteem nothing more of an honor,” he said, stiffly, “than to have been either an old or a new friend of Miss Vincent. But, in point of fact, our acquaintance in the past was very slight, as your knowledge that she was quite a child at the time might inform you.”
“Oh!” said Miss Joscelyn. Even her self-possession had need to recover itself after thisdoucheof cold water. But, while she exclaimed mentally that he was a perfect churl, her resentment was accompanied by a sense of triumph. “Thereisa mystery,” she thought, “and I am sure that Fanny Meredith is at the bottom of it!” With a laudable desire of probing further, therefore, she went on:
“We have all misunderstood a little, then,” she said, with some significance. “There has been an impression created—not so much by Aimée as by Mrs. Meredith—that you were friends in a very particular sense. I think,” she added, with an air of carefully weighing her words, “that it is a pity such an impression should be allowed to remain, if it does Aimée an injustice.”
“If such an impression exists,” said Kyrle, with emphasis, “it certainly does Miss Vincent the greatest injustice, and should not be permitted to remain. I repeat that my acquaintance with her was very slight, and that I thought of her only as a child, though I was struck by some qualities very remarkable in a child, which she displayed.”
“It is singular, since your acquaintance with her was so slight, that you should have been able to discover these qualities,” observed Miss Joscelyn, innocently, “for Aimée isveryreserved, very secretive, one may say, in her nature.”
“There were circumstances which called out the qualities,” said Kyrle, briefly; for hebegan to understand that he was being subjected to a process vulgarly known as pumping, and he had no idea of either gratifying Miss Joscelyn’s curiosity or betraying Fanny Meredith’s secret, unless defense of Aimée should make the last absolutely necessary.
“It is rather difficult to imagine what circumstances calculated to draw out remarkable qualities could have thrown together a shy child like Aimée and a young man like yourself,” said Miss Joscelyn, musingly. She glanced at him, and since the expression of his face said plainly that he declined to be communicative regarding these circumstances, she proved her talent for cross-examination by a swift and unexpected diversion:
“What a very attractive girl Fanny Berrien was at that time! Speaking of your acquaintance with Aimée reminds me that it was during that winter in Florida she became engaged to Mr. Meredith. It was said that she jilted another man shamefully—some one to whom she had been engaged a long time—in order to marry him.”
“Very likely,” responded Kyrle, feelingbound to make some comment. “I should imagine that Mrs. Meredith was never inclined to limit herself in strings to her bow.”
“She was always a dreadful flirt!” said Lydia, shaking her head with an air of virtuous reprobation. “I fancy Mr. Meredith does not know a quarter of her escapades.”
“Are we not always informed that, where ignorance is bliss, only folly would desire to be wise?” replied Kyrle, impatiently. “But shall we not return to your party? I think I see some one waving to us.”
Some one was indeed waving energetically and when they reached the group they found them in readiness to embark on the return voyage. In fact, the Merediths, Aimée, and Percy Joscelyn already filled one gondola. Fanny met Kyrle’s crestfallen look with a mocking gleam in her eye.
“All things donotcome to him who waits too long,” she said, oracularly. “Had you been a little earlier, I might have offered you a place with us; but now you will have to return as you came, alone, unless Lydia allows you to recline at her feet.”
“We shall be very happy if Mr. Kyrle will come with us,” said the major, blandly.
But Mr. Kyrle declined, more emphatically than was necessary. His own gondola was waiting, he said, and (this the merest and vaguest politeness), since he was alone, could he not offer a seat to any one?
Miss Joscelyn and her brother exchanged glances, and then the young lady sweetly spoke: “Since you are so kind, Mr. Kyrle—it reallyistoo bad for you to have to return alone—and as there are only two comfortable seats in a gondola, I will give mine to papa and come with you.”
She held out her hand to be assisted into the boat, and Kyrle, mentally anathematizing his own politeness, muttered that he was “delighted,” Fanny Meredith laughed rather irrelevantly, and they all pushed off.
What a picture it was when they were floating on the wide lagoon, with Venice rising before them out of the shining waters, its domes and towers enveloped in the golden haze of sunset, like some dream of fancy, too magically fair for reality! In such an hourand scene, who does not long for sympathetic companionship? Poor Kyrle at least did, as instinctively he glanced toward the gondola that held Aimée, and thought how different all this glory of earth and sky, all the enchantedlovelinessof the most poetical spot on earth, would have appeared to him had he been able to see it reflected in her eyes.
“Upon my word, Lydia, you astonished me this afternoon!” Mr. Percy Joscelyn condescended to say to his sister that evening. “I really had no idea of your ability before. You managed the situation perfectly. I never saw anything better done than the way you took possession of Kyrle.” He laughed softly. “The fellow’s face, when he stepped into his gondola, was a study!”
Lydia flushed at the laugh. She was pleased to be commended—to have proved conclusively that she had power to do what she had undertaken; but her vanity suffered under the imputation that she had forced herself upon an unwilling man. No woman likes to feel this. Even if it be a fact, sheconceals it as far as possible from herself, and never forgives the person who thrusts it brutally before her.
“I did not find it at all difficult to monopolize Mr. Kyrle, as you call it,” she said, with a tone of offense in her voice. “He did not seem to object to being monopolized. And about Aimée—I have found out just what I expected—he never was her lover at all.”
“How do you know?” asked her brother, eagerly.
“Because he told me so. Oh, you need not laugh! I was not foolish enough to ask the question as a question; I made him tell me what I wanted to know without his hardly being aware that he was telling it. I think I remember all the conversation. It was like this—”
She proceeded to give a fairly accurate report of it, to which Percy listened with the keenest attention, and, when she finished, admitted that her conclusions were probably right.
“I agree with you that it was most likely some tricky game of Fanny Berrien’s, in whichshe used Aimée as a blind,” he said. “And, late in the day as it is, there is nothing I should like so much as to get on the track of it and expose her. But we have no proof—none whatever—for you say this fellow will not speak, and we know that Aimée will not.”
“He may speak—that is, he may give me information without intending to do so, as he did this afternoon,” Lydia calmly replied. “I don’t despair of finding out the whole thing; but, after all, it has no great bearing on the present state of affairs.”
“More than you imagine,” her brother said. “A hold on Mrs. Meredith would be the most useful thing possible to me just now. If, as I don’t doubt, this man was an old lover of hers, she has not only deceived her husband with regard to him, but she is now bringing him forward as a suitor for Aimée. Give me one iota of proof of the story we both believe, and I will go to her and say: ‘You have probably still sufficient influence over Mr.Kyrle to send him away.’If not, I shall have the pleasure of telling Mr. Meredith the story of your love affair with him in the past. Getme the proof, Lydia—give me the power to say this—and there is nothing you can ask me that I will not do for you.”
“I will do my best,” said Lydia, “but absolute proof is difficult to get, you know. One may be perfectly certain, and yet not have that.”
“I know,” Percy answered. “But anything that would give me a hold over that woman—” He broke off in his speech, but the intensity of his tone boded little good to Fanny Meredith should that hold over her be obtained. “One thing, at least, is certain,” he resumed after a moment—“the man explicitly denied to you that he had ever been Aimée’s lover.”
“Explicitly and emphatically.”
“Then that point is number one secured. This is a good beginning. Continue the work, Lydia, and let us see how long Mr. Kyrle will allow himself to be monopolized.”