CHAPTER VII.THE TIME HAS COME.

CHAPTER VII.THE TIME HAS COME.

Threedays later Mildred and her young companion started for Italy. The doctor declared that the departure was premature—Mrs. Greswold was not strong enough to undertake such a fatiguing journey. But modern civilisation has smoothed the roads that lead over the civilised world, and for a lady who travels with a maid and a courier, journeys are rendered very easy; besides, Mildred had made up her mind to leave Brighton at any hazard.

The hour of parting came for Pamela and Castellani, and although the young lady took care to remind him at least a dozen times a day of that impending severance, not one word of the future, or of any cherished hope on his part, fell from his lips. And yet it had seemed to Pamela that he was devoted to her, that he only waited for the opportunity to speak. It seemed to her also that he felt the painof parting, for he had an air of deepest melancholy daring these farewell days, and talked only of saddest themes. He was in Lewes Crescent nearly all day long—he played the mournfullest strains—he behaved like a man oppressed with a secret sorrow; but never a word of love or marriage did he breathe to Pamela. He pressed her hand gently, with an almost paternal affection, as she leant out of the carriage which was to take her to the station, and bade him a last good-bye.

“Good-bye!” she half sang, half sobbed, in the darkness at the back of the hired landau, as they drove bumping down St. James’s street. “Good-bye, summer; good-bye, everything!”

She did not even glance at Hannington’s autumn fashions as they drove up the hill. She felt that life was no longer worth dressing for.

“He never could have cared for me,” she thought, as she dropped her silent tears upon Box’s thoroughbred neck, “and yet he seemed—he seemed! Does he seem like that to every girl, I wonder? Is he all seeming?”

After this came a leisurely journey, and thenlong, slow weeks of a luxurious repose amidst fairest surroundings—a life which to those who have lived and fought the great battle, and come wounded but yet alive out of the fray, is the life paradisaic; but for the fresh, strong soul panting for emotions and excitements, like a young bird that yearns to try the strength of his wings, this kind of languid existence seems like a foretaste of death and nothingness. Mountains and lakes were not enough for Pamela—the azure of an Italian sky, the infinite variety of sunset splendours, the brightness of a morning heralded by a roseate flush on snow-capped hills—all these were futile where the heart was empty. Mildred’s maturer grief found some consolation in these exquisite surroundings; but Pamela wanted to live, and those encircling mountains seemed to her as the walls of a gigantic prison.

“It was so nice at Brighton,” she said, looking along the burnished mirror of the lake with despondent eyes, tired of the mystery of those reflected mountains, descending into infinite depths, a world inverted: “so gay, so cheery—always somethinggoing on. Don’t you think, aunt, that the air of this place is very relaxing?”

That word relaxing is the keynote of discontent. It is a word that can blight the loveliest spots the sun ever shone upon. It is the speck upon the peach. Be sure that before ever he mentioned the apple, Satan told Eve that Eden was very relaxing.

“I hope you are not unhappy here, my dear Pamela?” said Mildred, evading the question.

“Unhappy? O, no, indeed, dear aunt! I could not be otherwise than happy with you anywhere. There are lots of people who would envy me living on the shore of Lago Maggiore, and seeing those delightful mountains all day long; but I did so enjoy Brighton—the theatre, the Pavilion; always something going on.”

The two ladies had their own suite of apartments in the hotel, and lived in that genteel seclusion which is the privilege of wealth as well as of rank all over the world. Pamela envied the tourists of Cook and Gaze, as she saw them trooping into thetable d’hôte, or heard their clatter in the public drawing-room. It was all very well to sit in one’sown balcony, gazing at the placid lake, while the rabble amused themselves below. One felt one’s superior status, and the advantage of being somebody instead of nobody; but when the rabble danced or acted charades, or played dumb crambo, or squabbled over a game at nap, they seemed to have the best of it somehow.

“I almost wish I had been born a vulgarian,” sighed Pamela one evening, when the tourists were revolving to the “Myosotis Waltz” banged out on a cast-iron grand in the salon below.

Mildred did all she could in the way of excursionising to enliven the dulness of their solitary life; but the beauties of Nature palled upon Pamela’s lively mind. However the day might be occupied in drives to distant scenes of surpassing loveliness, the ever-lengthening evenings had to be spent in the Louis Quatorze salon, where no visitors dropped in to disturb the monotony of books and work, piano and pet-dog.

For Mildred, too, those evening hours seemed unutterably long, and as autumn deepened into winter, her burden seemed heavier to bear. Timebrought no consolation, offered no hope. She had lost all that had made life worth living. First, the child who represented all that was brightest and fairest and gayest and most hopeful in her life; next, the husband who was her life itself, the prop and staff, the column around which every tendril of her being was entwined. There was nothing for her in the future but a life of self-abnegation, of working and living for others. The prospect seemed dark and dreary, and she knew now how small a margin of her life had been devoted to God. The idea of devoting herself wholly was too repellent. She knew now that she was very human, wedded to earthly loves and earthly happiness, needing a long purgation before she could attain the saintly attitude.

She thought of Enderby every night as she sat in silent melancholy beside the hearth, where a solitary log crumbled slowly to white ashes on the marble, and where the faint warmth had a perfume of distant pine-woods; she thought of Enderby and its widowed master. Was he living there still, or was he, too, a wanderer? She had heard but little of his movements since she leftEngland. Pamela had written to him, and he had replied, but had said very little about himself. The only news in Rosalind’s letters was of the extraordinary development—intellectual and otherwise—of the baby, and the magnitude of Sir Henry’s bag. Beyond the baby and the bag, Lady Mountford’s pen rarely travelled.

Mildred thought of that absent husband with an aching heart. There were times when she asked herself if she had done well—when she was tempted to total surrender—when the pen was in her hand ready to write a telegram imploring him to come to her—or when she was on the point of giving her orders for an immediate return to England. But pride and principle alike restrained her. She had taken her own course, she had made up her mind deliberately, after long thought and many prayers. She could not tread the backward way, the primrose path of sin. She could but pray for greater strength, for loftier purpose, for that grand power of self-forgetfulness which makes for heaven.

Christmas came and found her in this frame of mind. There were very few tourists now, andthe long corridors had a sepulchral air, the snowy mountain-tops were blotted out by mist and rain. For Pamela, Christmastide had been a season of much gaiety hitherto—a season of new frocks and many dances, hunting and hunt-balls, and the change was a severe test of that young lady’s temper. She came through the ordeal admirably, never forgot that she had promised her uncle to be his wife’s faithful companion, and amused herself as best she could with Italian music and desultory studies. She read Mr. Sinnett’s books, studied Bohn’s edition of Plato’s Dialogues, addled her youthful brain with various theories of a far-reaching kind, and fancied herself decidedly mediumistic. That word mediumistic possessed a peculiar fascination for her. She had looked at César Castellani’s eyeballs, which were markedly globular—seeming, as it were, reflecting surfaces for the spirit world, a sure indication of the mediumistic temperament. She had seen other signs; and now in this romantic solitude, sauntering by the lake in the misty winter air, just before sundown, she fancied herself almost in communion with that absent genius. Distance couldnot separate two people when both were eminently mediumistic.

“I believe he is thinking of me at this very moment,” she said to herself one afternoon at the end of the year, “and I have a kind of feeling that I shall see him—bodily—very soon.”

She forgot to reckon with herself that this kind of feeling could count for very little, since she had experienced it in greater or less degree ever since she had left Brighton. In almost every excursion she had beguiled the tedium of the way with some pleasant day-dream. Castellani would appear in the most unlooked-for manner at the resting-place where they were to lunch. He would have followed them from England at his leisure, and would come upon them unannounced, pleased to startle her by his sudden apparition. In absence she had recalled so many tender speeches, so many indications of regard; and she had taught herself to believe that he really cared for her, and had but been withheld from a declaration by a noble dignity which would not stoop to woo a woman richer than himself.

“He is poor and proud,” she thought.

Poor and proud. How sweet the alliteration sounded!

She had thought of him so incessantly that it was hardly a coincidence, and yet it seemed to her a miracle when his voice sounded behind her in the midst of her reverie.

“You ought not to be out of doors, Miss Ransome, when the sun is so nearly down.”

She turned and faced him, pale first with infinite pleasure, and then rosy to the roots of her flaxen hair.

“When did you come?” she asked eagerly. “Have you been long in Italy?”

“I only came through the St. Gothard last night, breakfasted at Locarno, and came here by road. I have not seen Mrs. Greswold yet. She is well, I hope?”

“She is not over-well. She frets dreadfully, I am afraid. It is so sad that she and Uncle George should be living apart for some mysterious reason which nobody knows. They were the most perfect couple.”

“Mrs. Greswold is a perfect woman.”

“And Uncle George has the finest character. His first marriage was unhappy, I believe; nobody ever talked about it. I think it was only just known in the family that he had married in Italy when he was a young man, and that his wife had died within a year. It was supposed that she could not have been nice, since nobody knew anything about her.”

“Rather hard upon the dead lady to be condemned by her husband’s silence. Will you take me to your aunt?”

“With pleasure. I think she ought to be charmed to see you, for we lead the most solitary existence here. My aunt has set her face against knowing anybody, in the hotel or out of it. And there have been some really charming people staying here; people one would go out of one’s way to know. Have you come here for your health?”

“For my pleasure only. I was sick to death of England and of cities. I longed to steep myself in the infinite and the beautiful. Those indigo clouds above the mountains yonder—with that bold splash of orange shining through the gorge—are worth thejourney, were there no more than that; and when the wintry stars glass themselves in the lake by and by, ah! then one knows what it is to be the living, acting element in a world of passive beauty. And to think that there are men and women in London groping about in the fog, and fancying themselves alive!”

“O, but there are compensations—theatres, concerts, dances.”

“Miss Ransome, I fear you are a Philistine.”

“O, no, no! I adore Nature. I should like to be above those common earthly pleasures—to journey from star to star along the planetary chain, rising at each transition to a higher level, until I came to the spirit world where— This is the hotel, and we are on the second floor. Would you like the lift?”

“I never walk when I can be carried.”

“Then we will go up in the lift. I used to think it rather good fun at first,” said Pamela with a sigh, remembering how soon that trivial excitement had begun to pall.

Mildred received the unexpected visitor with marked coldness; but it was not easy to remainpersistently cold while Pamela was so warm. Castellani was one of those provoking people who refuse to see when they are unwelcome. He was full of talk, gay, bright, and varied. He had all the social events of the past three months to talk about. Society had witnessed the most extraordinary changes—marriages—sudden deaths—everything unlooked for. There had been scandals, too; but these he touched upon lightly, and with a deprecating air, professing himself sorry for everybody.

Mildred allowed him to talk, and was, perhaps, a little more cordial when he took his leave than she had been when he came. He had prevented her from thinking her own thoughts for the space of an hour, and that was something for which to be grateful. He had come there in pursuit of Pamela, no doubt. He could have no other reason. He had been playing his own game, holding back in order to be the more gladly accepted when he should declare himself. It was thus Mildred reasoned with herself; and yet there had been looks and tones which it was difficult for her to forget.

“He is by profession a lady-killer,” she argued; “no doubt he treats all women in the same way. He cannot help trying to fascinate them; and there are women like Cecilia Tomkison who encourage him to make sentimental speeches.”

She persuaded herself that the looks and tones which had offended meant very little. For Pamela’s sake she would like to think well of him.

“You have told me about a great many people,” she said, as he was leaving them, “but you have told me nothing about my husband. Did you hear if he was still at Enderby—and well?”

“He was still at Enderby up to the end of November, and I believe he was well. I spent three days at Riverdale, and heard of him from Mrs. Hillersdon.”

Mildred asked no further question, nor did she invite Mr. Castellani to repeat his visit. Happily for his own success in life, he was not the kind of person to wait for invitations.

“I am staying in the hotel,” he said. “I hope I may drop in sometimes—to-morrow even. MissRansome is good enough to say she would like to sing some duets with me.”

“Miss Ransome knows I have not been receiving any visitors,” Mildred answered, with a touch of reproachfulness.

“O, but Mr. Castellani is an old friend! The people you avoided were strangers,” said Pamela eagerly.

Mildred made no further protest. Few men would have accepted a permission so grudgingly given; but Castellani stopped at no obstacle when he had a serious purpose to serve: and in this case his purpose was very serious; for life or death, he told himself.

He came next day, and the day after that, and every day for four or five weeks, till the first flush of precocious spring lent beauty to the landscape and softness to the sky. Mildred submitted to his visits as an inevitable consequence of Pamela’s folly; submitted, and by and by fell into the habit of being amused by Castellani; interested in his talk of men and women and of books, of which he seemed to have read all of any mark that had ever beenwritten. She allowed herself to be interested; she allowed herself to be soothed by his music; she let him become an influence in her life, unawares, caught by a subtlety that had never been surpassed by anybody of lesser gifts than Satan: but never did this presumptuous wooer beguile her into one single thought that wronged her absent husband. Her intellect acknowledged the tempter’s intellectual sway, but her heart knew no wavering.

César Castellani had seen a good deal of life, but as he had assiduously cultivated the seamy side, it was hardly strange if he lacked the power of understanding a pure-minded woman. To his mind every woman was a citadel, better or worse defended, but always assailable by treason or strategy, force or art, and never impregnable. Mrs. Greswold was his Troy, his Thebes, his ideal of majesty and strength in woman. So far as virtue went upon this earth he believed Mildred Greswold to be virtuous; proud, too; not a woman to lower her crest to the illicit conqueror, or stain her name with the disgrace of a runaway wife. But it had been given to him to disturb a union that had existed happily for fourteenyears. It had been given to him to awaken the baneful passion of jealousy, to sow the seeds of suspicion, to part husband and wife. He had gone to work carelessly enough in the first instance, struck with Mildred’s beauty and sweetness—full of sentimental recollections of the fair child-face and the bright streaming hair that had passed him like a vision in the sunlight of Hyde Park. He had envied the husband so fair a wife, so luxurious a home, with its air of old-world respectability, that deep-rooted English aristocracy of landed estate, which to the foreign adventurer seemed of all conditions in life the most enviable. He had been impelled by sheer malice when he uttered his careless allusion to George Greswold’s past life, and with a word blighted two hearts.

He saw the effect of the speech in the face of the wife, and in the manner of the husband saw that he had launched a thunderbolt. It was with deepest interest he followed up his advantage; watched and waited for further evidence of the evil he had done. He was a close student of the faces of women; above all, when the face was lovely. He saw all the marksof secret care in Mrs. Greswold’s countenance during the weeks that elapsed between his first visit to Enderby and the charity concert. He saw the deepening shadows, the growing grief, and on the day of the concert he saw the traces of a still keener pain in those pale features and haggard eyes; but for an immediate separation between husband and wife he was not prepared.

He heard at Riverdale of Mrs. Greswold’s departure from home. The suddenness and strangeness of her journey had set all the servants talking. He found out where she had gone, and hastened at once to call upon his devoted friend Mrs. Tomkison, who told him all she had to tell.

“There is some domestic misery—an intrigue on his part, I fear,” said the glib Cecilia. “Men are such traitors. It would hardly surprise me to-morrow if I was told that Adam was maintaining an expensiveménagein St. John’s Wood. She would tell me nothing, poor darling; but she sent for Mr. Cancellor, and was closeted with him for an hour. No doubt she toldhimeverything. And then she went off to Brighton.”

Castellani followed to Brighton, and his influence with Miss Fausset enabled him to learn something, but not all. Not one word said Miss Fausset about the supposed identity between George Greswold’s first wife and John Fausset’sprotégée; but she told Mr. Castellani that she feared her niece’s separation from her husband would be permanent.

“Why does she not divorce him,” he asked, “if he has wronged her?”

“He has not wronged her—in the way you mean. And if he had, she could not divorce him, unless he had beaten her. You men made the law, and framed it in your own favour. It is a very sad case, César, and I am not at liberty to say any more about it. You must ask me no more questions.”

Castellani obeyed for the time being; but he did ask further questions upon other occasions, and he exercised all his subtlety in the endeavour to extract information from Miss Fausset. That lady, however, was inflexible; and he had to wait for time to solve the mystery.

“They have parted on account of that first marriage,” he told himself. “Perhaps she has foundout all about the poor lady’s fate, and takes the worst view of the catastrophe. That would account for their separation. She would not stay with a husband she suspected; he would not live with a wife who could so suspect. A very pretty quarrel.”

A quarrel—a life-long severance—but not a divorce. There was the difficulty. César Castellani believed himself invincible with women. The weakest, and in some cases the worst, of the sex had educated him into the belief that no woman lived who could resist him. And here was a woman whom he intensely admired, and whose married life it had been his privilege to wreck. She was a rich woman—and it was essential to his success in life that he should marry wealth. With all his various gifts he was not a money-earning man, he would never attain even lasting renown by his talents. For when the good fairies had endowed him with music and poetry, eloquence and grace, the strong-minded, hard-featured fairy called Perseverance came to his christening feast, and seeing no knife and fork laid for her, doomed him to the curse of idleness. He had all the talents which enable a man to shine in societybut he had also the money-spending talent, the elegant tastes and inclinations which require some thousands a year for their sustenance. Hitherto he had lived by his wits—from hand to mouth; but for some years past he had been on the look-out for a rich wife.

He knew that Mildred Greswold was three times richer than Pamela Ramsome. The wealth of the Faussets came within the region of his knowledge; and he knew how large a fortune John Fausset had left his daughter, and how entirely that fortune was at her own disposal. He might have had Pamela for the asking; Pamela, with a paltry fifteen hundred a year; Pamela, who sang false and bored him beyond measure. The higher prize seemed impossible; but it was his nature to attempt the impossible. His belief in his own power was boundless.

“She cannot divorce her husband,” he told himself; “but he may divorce her if she should wrong him, or even seem to wrong him: and the most innocent woman may be compromised if her lover is daring and will risk much for a greatcoup, as I would.”

He thought himself very near success in theselengthening afternoons in the beginning of February, when he was allowed to spend the lovely hour of sundown in Mrs. Greswold’ssalon, watching the sunset from the wide plate-glass window, which commanded a panorama of lake and mountain, with every exquisite change from concentrated light to suffused colour, and then to deepening purple that slowly darkened into night. It was the hour in which it was deemed dangerous to be out of doors; but it was the loveliest hour of the day or the night, and Mildred never wearied of that glorious outlook over lake and sky. She was silent for the most part at such a time, sitting in the shadow of the window-curtains, her face hidden from the other two, sitting apart from the world, thinking of the life that had been and could never be again.

Sometimes in the midst of her sad thoughts Castellani would strike a chord on the piano at the other end of the room, and then a tender strain of melody would steal out of the darkness, and that veiled tenor voice would sing some of the saddest lines of Heine, the poet of the broken heart, sadder than Byron, sadder than Musset, sad with the sadness ofone who had never known joy. Those words wedded to tenderest melody always moved Mildred Greswold to tears. Castellani saw her tears and thought they were given to him; such tears as yielding virtue gives to the tempter. He knew the power of his voice, the fascination of music for those in whom the love of music is a part of their being. He could not foresee the possibility of failure. He was already admitted to that kind of intimacy which is the first stage of success. He was an almost daily visitor; he came upon the two ladies in their walks and drives, and contrived, unbidden, to make himself their companion; he chose the books that both were to read, and made himself useful in getting library parcels sent from Milan or Paris. He contrived to make himself indispensable, or at least thought himself so. Pamela’s eagerness filled up all the gaps; she was so full of talk and vivacity that it was not easy to be sure about the sentiments of her more silent companion; but César Castellani’s vanity was the key with which he read Mildred’s character and feelings.

“She is a sphinx,” he told himself; “but I think I can solve her mystery. The magnetic powerof such a love as mine must draw her to me sooner or later.”

Mr. Castellani had a profound belief in his own magnetism. That word magnetic had a large place in his particular creed. He talked of certain fascinating women—generally a littlepassée—as “magnetic.” He prided himself upon being a magnetic man.

While César Castellani flattered himself that he was on the threshold of success, Mildred Greswold was deliberating how best to escape from him and his society for ever. Had she been alone there need have been no difficulty; but she saw Pamela’s happiness involved in his presence, she saw the fresh young cheek pale at the thought of separation, and she was perplexed how to act for the best. Had Pamela been her daughter she could not have considered her feelings more tenderly. She told herself that Mr. Castellani would be a very bad match for Miss Ransome; yet when she saw the girl’s face grow radiant at the sound of his footsteps, when she watched her dullness in his absence, that everlasting air of waiting for somebody which marks the girlwho is in love, she found herself hoping that the Italian would make a formal proposal, and she was inclined to meet him half-way.

But the new year was six weeks old, and he had not even hinted at matrimonial intentions, so Mildred felt constrained to speak plainly.

“My dearest Pamela, we are drifting into a very uncomfortable position with Mr. Castellani,” she began gently. “He comes here day after day as if he were yourfiancé, and yet he has said nothing definite.”

Pamela grew crimson at this attack, and her hands began to tremble over her crewel-work, though she tried to go on working.

“I respect him all the more for being in no haste to declare himself, Aunt Mildred,” she said, rather angrily. “If he were the kind of adventurer you once thought him, he would have made me an offer ages ago. Why should he not come to see us? I’m sure he’s very amusing and very useful. Even you seem interested in him and cheered by him. Why should he not come? We have no one’s opinion to study in a foreign hotel.”

“I don’t know about that, dear. People always hear about things; and it might injure you by and by in society to have your name associated with Mr. Castellani.”

“I am sure I should be very proud of it,” retorted Pamela; “very proud to have my name associated with genius.”

“And you really, honestly believe you could be happy as his wife, Pamela?” asked Mildred gravely.

“I know that I can never be happy with any one else. I don’t consider myself particularly clever, aunt, but I believe I have the artistic temperament. Life without art would be a howling wilderness for me.”

“Life means a long time, dear. Think what a difference it must make whether you lead it with a good or a bad man!”

“All the goodness in the world would not make me happy with a husband who was not musical; not John Howard, nor John Wesley, nor John Bunyan, nor any of your model Johns. John Miltonwas,” added Pamela rather vaguely, “and handsome into the bargain; but I’m afraid he was a littledry.”

“Promise me at least this much, Pamela. First, that you will take no step without your uncle’s knowledge and advice; and next, that if ever you marry Mr. Castellani, you will have your fortune strictly settled upon yourself.”

“O, aunt, how sordid! But perhaps it would be best. If I had the money, I should give it all to him: but if he had the money, with his artistic temperament he would be sure to lavish it all upon other people. He would not be able to pass a picturesque beggar without emptying his pockets. Do you remember how he was impressed by the four old men on the church steps the other day?”

“Yes, but I don’t think he gave them anything.”

“Not while we were with him; but you may be sure he did afterwards.”

After this conversation Mrs. Greswold made up her mind on two points. She would arrange for a prompt departure to Venice or Naples, whichever might be advised for the spring season; and she would sound Mr. Castellani as to his intentions. It was not fair to Pamela that she should be kept in the dark any longer, that the gentleman should beallowed to sing duets with her, and advise her studies, and join her in her walks, and yet give no definite expression to his regard.

Mildred tried to think the best of him as a suitor for her husband’s niece. She knew that he was clever; she knew that he was fairly well born. On his mother’s side he sprang from the respectable commercial classes; on his father’s side he belonged to the art-world. There was nothing debasing in such a lineage. From neither her friend Mrs. Tomkison nor from Miss Fausset had she heard anything to his discredit; and both those ladies had known him long. There could therefore be no objection on the score of character. Pamela ought to make a much better marriage in the way of means and position; but those excellent and well-chosen alliances dictated by the wisdom of friends are sometimes known to result in evil; and, in a word, why should not Pamela be happy in her own way?

Having thus reasoned with herself, Mildred watched for an opportunity to speak to Castellani. She had not long to wait. He called rather earlier than usual one afternoon, when Pamela had gone outfor a mountain ramble with her dog and her maid, to search for those doubly precious flowers which bloom with the first breath of spring. Castellani had seen the young lady leave the hotel soon after the midday meal, armed with her alpenstock, and accompanied by her attendant carrying a basket. She had fondly hoped that he would offer to join her expedition, to dig out delicate ferns from sheltered recesses, to hunt for mountain hyacinths and many-hued anemones; but he observed her departureperdubehind a window-curtain in the reading-room, and half-an-hour afterwards he was ushered into Mrs. Greswold’s drawing-room.

“I feared you were ill,” he said, “as I saw Miss Ransome excursionising without you.”

“I have a slight headache, and felt more inclined for a book than for a long walk. Why did you not go with Pamela? I daresay she would have been glad of your company. Peterson is not a lively companion for a mountain ramble.”

“Poor Miss Ransome! How sad to be a young English Mees, and to have to be chaperoned by a person like Peterson!” said Castellani, with a carelessshrug. “No, I had no inclination to join in the anemone hunt. Miss Ransome told me yesterday what she was going to do. I have no passion for wild flowers or romantic walks.”

“But you seem to have a great liking for Miss Ransome’s society,” replied Mildred gravely. “You have cultivated it very assiduously since you came here, and I think I may be excused for fancying that you came to Pallanza on her account.”

“You may be excused for thinking anything wild and improbable, because you are a woman and wilfully blind,” he answered, drawing his chair a little nearer to hers, and lowering his voice with a touch of tenderness. “But surely—surely you cannot think that I came to Pallanza on Miss Ransome’s account?”

“I might not have thought so had you been a less frequent visitor in this room, where you have come—pardon me for saying so—very much of your own accord. I don’t think it was quite delicate or honourable to come here so often, to be so continually in the society of a frank, impressionable girl,unless you had some deeper feeling for her than casual admiration.”

“Mrs. Greswold, upon my honour I have never in the whole course of my acquaintance with Miss Ransome by one word or tone implied any warmer feeling than that which you call casual admiration.”

“And you are not attached to her? you do not cherish the hope of winning her for your wife?” asked Mildred seriously, looking at him with earnest eyes.

That calm, grave look chilled him to the core of his heart. His brow flushed, his eyes grew dark and troubled. He felt as if the crisis of his life were approaching, and augury was unfavourable.

“I have never cherished any such hope; I never shall.”

“Then why have you come here so continually?”

“For God’s sake, do not ask me that question! The time has not come.”

“Yes, Mr. Castellani, the time has come. The question should have been asked sooner. You have compromised Miss Ransome by your meaningless assiduities. You have compromised me; for Iought to have taken better care of her than to allow an acquaintance of so ambiguous a character. But I am very glad that I have spoken, and that you have replied plainly. From to-day your visits must cease. We shall go to the south of Italy in a few days. Let me beg that you will not happen to be travelling in the same direction.”

Mildred was deeply indignant. She had cheapened her husband’s niece—Randolph Ransome’s co-heiress—a girl whom half the young men in London would have considered a prize in the matrimonial market: and this man, who had haunted her at home and abroad for the last seven or eight weeks, dared now to tell her that his attentions were motiveless so far as her niece was concerned.

“O, Mildred, do not banish me!” he cried passionately. “You must have understood. You must know that it is you, and you only, for whom I care; you whose presence makes life lovely for me, in whose absence I am lost and wretched. You have wrung my secret from me. I did not mean to offend. I would have respected your strange widowhood. I would have waited half a lifetime. Only to see you,to be near you—your slave, your proud, too happy slave. That was all I would have asked. Why may that not be? Why may I not come and go, like the summer wind that breathes round you, like the flowers that look in at your window—faithful as your dog, patient as old Time? Why may it not be, Mildred?”

She stood up suddenly before him, white to the lips, and with cold contempt in those eyes which he had seen so lovely with the light of affection when they had looked at her husband. She looked at him unfalteringly, as she might have looked at a worm. Anger had made her pale, but that was all.

“You must have had a strange experience of women before you would dare to talk to any honest woman in such a strain as this, Mr. Castellani,” she said. “I will not lower myself so far as to tell you what I think of your conduct. Miss Ransome shall know the kind of person whose society she has endured. I must beg that you will consider yourself as much a stranger to her as to me from to-day.”

She moved towards the bell, but he intercepted her.

“You are very cruel,” he said; “but the day will come when you will be sorry that you rejected the most devoted love that was ever offered to woman, in order to be true to broken bonds.”

“They are not broken. They will hold me to my dying hour.”

“Yes, to a madman and a murderer.”

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