"You said just now that seeing me brought things back to you."

It is partly remorse at having snubbed her, and partly perversity, which dictates this sentence on Jim's part. The perversity is, perhaps, the predominating element in his motive—a perversity which, having chilled her away from the subject when she was eagerly seeking an opening to it, now forces her to return to it. She starts a little.

"Yes—yes," she answers; "but 'brought things back' is not quite the right phrase; they"—her voice growing low and tremulous—"had not very far to come."

The quiver in her voice annoys him almost as much as Byng's tears used to do.

"If you would like to ask me any questions," he says stiffly, "I am ready to answer them."

"Are you?" she cries hungrily; "oh, that is kind of you! but, then, you always were kind; but not here"—looking apprehensively round—"I could not trust myself to talk about—about him here; I—I should break down, and nothing"—with a smile that, though watery, is still humorous—"would induce me to make a fool of myself before the widow Wadman." Then, seeing him look at a loss: "Come indoors!" she says impulsively, standing up, and half stretching out her hand as if to draw him after her. "Come into our salon—no, you need not be afraid; we shall have it all to ourselves; father and mother have gone out for their usual constitutional on the Boulevard Mustapha."

He follows her silently, and neither speaks till they find themselves tÊte-À-tÊte in the private apartment of the Le Marchants.

It is on the rez-de-chaussÉe, a suite of three little whitewashed rooms, transmogrified from their original hotel nakedness by flowers and brocade bits. Three large green jars on the chimney-piece, full of generous rose-branches, and boughs of salvia and iris, and stalwart yellow jessamine, make the air sweetly and lightly perfumed. On the table is a litter of Tauchnitz novels, disastrously old English papers, the little scurrilous Algerian sheet, and, lastly, Elizabeth's workbasket—the big workbasket which Jim had last seen standing on the floor in the entresol, at the Piazza d'Azeglio, with its contents strewn all over his friend's prostrate body. At the sight a bitter smile breaks over his face.

"An old acquaintance!" he says, making a mock salutation to it; "it is in better order than when last I had the pleasure of seeing it."

"Do you mean in Florence?" she asks, very slowly.

"Yes"—still with that acrid smile—"after you were gone, I had the honour of helping to pack it to send after you. I am afraid I was rather clumsy over it; but, at any rate, I managed better than he. By-the-bye, did you find any rust on your scissors and thimble when next you had occasion to use them? Poor boy! he cried enough over them to take all the polish off!"

She has sunk down upon the sofa, over which a great woollen haik, dyed with harmonious dull tints, is thrown.

"Do not sneer at me!" she says faintly. "You would not if you knew how you hurt me. Is he—is he—how is he?"

"He is not ill."

The answer ought to be reassuring; but there is something in the manner in which it is uttered that tells her that it neither is, nor is meant to be so. It is so ominous that her lips, after a feeble effort or two, give up the endeavour to frame any query. All her power of interrogation has passed into those eyes, out of which her companion has been so brilliantly successful in chasing their transient morning mirth.

"When a man," says Jim gravely, "at the outset of his life, gets such a facer as he did, if he has not a very strong character, it is apt to drive him off the rails, to give him a shove downwards."

"I see; and you think I have given him a shove downwards?"

"Yes."

There is a pause. Jim's eyes are resolutely turned away from the face of Elizabeth, upon whose small white area twitches of pain are making cruel disfigurement. He does not want to have his heart softened towards her, so he stares persistently over her head at a Mussulman praying-carpet, which, old and still rich-toned, despite the wearing of pious knees, hangs on the wall. At length she speaks, in a key as low as—were not the room so entirely still—would be inaudible.

"If I had married him, I should have given him a much worse shove down."

Jim holds his breath. Is he about to hear from her own lips that secret which he has magnanimously resisted all opportunities of hearing from other sources? But the words that, after a pause, follow this almost whispered statement are not a confession. They are only an appeal.

"You would be doing the kindest thing that you ever did in your life, if you could bring yourself to say that you thought I did it for the best."

He feels that if he submits his eyes to hers, his will must go with them; he will have no power left of dissent from any request she may choose to make; so he still stares over her head at a screen which hides the doorless entrance to the third room of the little suite. One leaf, folded back, gives a peep through the little chamber, through its deep-arched window to where a date-palm stands up straight against the sea.

"I could not possibly say that unless I knew the circumstances of the case," he answers judicially.

He hears a low sigh, not of impatience, but of melancholy acquiescence.

"Then you must go on thinking ill of me."

There is such a depth of dejection, as well as such an unalterable sweetness, in her voice, that the words of little Prince Arthur, addressed to Hubert, flash upon his mind:

After all, what power in earth or sky has appointed him her executioner?

"I do not wish to think ill of you," he answers sadly. "Good heavens! do I need to tell you that? I have tried all along to keep myself from judging you; but I should not be human—you must know that I should not be human—if I did not ask myself why you did it."

"Why I left Florence?"

"Yes."

She sits stock-still for a moment, the very little colour that there ever was in it retreating out of her face.

"If I told you that, I should be telling you everything."

He is looking at her now; after all, he cannot keep his gaze pinned to the screen for ever, and, as he looks, he sees an emotion of so transcendently painful a nature set her little sad features working, that the one impulse that dominates him is to ease her suffering.

Poor little docile creature! She is going to tell him her secret, since he exacts it, though it is only with a rending asunder of soul and body that it can be revealed. He puts out his hand hurriedly, with a gesture as of prohibition.

"Then do not tell me."

She sinks back upon her haik with a movement of relief, and puts up her fine handkerchief to her pale lips. There is a perfect silence between them for awhile. At his elbow is a great un-English, unwintry nosegay of asphodel and iris. He passes his fingers absently over the freakish spikes.

"How did he take it? how did he take it at first?"

Her voice, though now tolerably distinct, is stamped with that character of awe which fills us all at approaching a great calamity.

"He would not believe it at first; and then he cried a great deal—oh, an immense deal!"—with an accent of astonishment, even at the recollection of his friend's tear-power—"and then—oh, then, he thought of putting an end to himself!"

Jim had meant to have made this relation in a tone of dispassionate narrative, but against his will and intention, as his memory recalls what seem to him the unworthy antics played by Byng's grief, his voice takes a sarcastic inflection. The horror written on his auditor's face as he utters the latest clause of his sentence recalls him to himself.

"Do not be afraid!" he says, in a tone which has no longer anything akin to a sneer in it, though it is not devoid of bitterness; "the impulse was a short-lived one; he is not thinking of putting an end to himself now, I can assure you of that; he is only thinking of how he can best amuse himself. Whether he is much more successful in that than he was in the former, I am not so sure."

Her eyes have dropped to her own fragile, ringless hands as they lie on her lap.

"Poor boy! poor boy!" she says over softly twice, moving her head up and down with a little compassionate movement.

At the pity expressed by her gesture, an unjust and unjustifiable hard anger takes harsh possession of him.

"It was a pity you let it go so far," he says austerely; "you must allow me to say that much; but I suppose, in point of fact, the ball once set rolling, it was past your power to stop it."

She listens to his philippic, with her head meekly bent.

"I did not try," she answers, in a half·whisper; then, after a pause, raising her down-dropped eyes, lit with a blue fire of excitement, almost inspiration, to his, "I said to myself, 'If I have any luck, I shall die before the smash comes;' and I just lived on from day to day. I had not the heart to stop it; I knew it would stop of itself before long; I had never—hardly ever"—correcting herself, as it seems, with a modifying afterthought—"in my life before known what happiness meant; and oh! oh! OH!"—with a groan of deepening intensity at each repeated interjection—"what a big word it is!"

Never—hardly ever—known what happiness meant before! Why, surely she was happy at the Moat! and before his mind's eye there rises an image of her in her riotous rosy gaiety; but even as it does, there flashes upon him a comprehension of her speech.

It is not the careless merriment of childhood to which she is alluding; it is to the happiness, par excellence, of life. If this is the case, why did she correct herself and modify her negative with a "hardly"? A jealous feeling of someone else—someone beside Byng; a jealousy none the less keen for being vague—for not knowing on what object it can lay hold—sharpens his tone as he repeats aloud, and with an accent of interrogation, her qualifying adverb:

"Hardly ever, that implies——"

But she breaks in hurriedly, as if dreading—and at the same time doubting her own power of baffling—cross-examination upon that subject on whose borders they are continually hovering.

"Talking of happiness makes one think of unhappiness, does not it? We both know something about that, do not we?"

She pauses, and he sees that she is alluding to his own sorrow, and that her eye is sounding his to see whether he would wish her to approach it more nearly. His eye, in answer, must give but a dubious beam, since he himself is quite unsure of what his wishes on the subject are; and she goes on with the haste and yet unsteadiness of one who is treading on swampy ground, that gives beneath his feet.

"We saw it in the papers; I could not believe it at first. It was the last thing I ever expected to happen. I thought of writing to you, but I did not."

She looks at him rather wistfully, and although but two minutes ago she had been confessing to him her passion for another man, he sees that she is anxious he should tell her that her sympathy would have been precious to him. He feels the same sensation as before of mixed anger and fascination at the ductility of her nature. What business has she to care whether he would have liked to hear from her or not?

"It seemed such a pity that it was she, and not I!"

Again her eye interrogates his, as if asking for acquiescence in this suggestion, but he cannot give it. With a shock of surprise—nay, horror—at himself, he finds that he is unable to echo the wish that Elizabeth had died and Amelia lived.

"I said so to mammy at the time. Ah, here is mammy!"

And, indeed, as she speaks the door opens, and Mrs. Le Marchant enters in her walking-dress. At the sight of Jim, a look, which certainly does not betoken pleasure, though good breeding prevents its representing the opposite emotion, crosses her handsome, worn face.

"I brought Mr. Burgoyne in here," says Elizabeth, in what seems rather precipitate explanation, "because we could not talk comfortably out on the terrace; they listen to everything we say: they have such long ears—the Widow Wadman and Miss Strutt!"

"I do not know what State secrets you and Mr. Burgoyne can have to discuss," replies the mother, with a smile that, though courteous, but ill disguises the underlying anxiety. "Yes, dear child, I shall be very much obliged if you will take my bonnet upstairs for me"—this in answer to little tender overtures from Elizabeth, overtures that remind Jim of 12 bis, Piazza d' Azeglio. "I do not know whether you have yet found it so" (to Jim); "but this is a slack place."

No sooner has the door closed upon her daughter than her tone changes.

"What have you been talking about to her," she inquires rapidly; "not, I hope, about him?"

"I could not help it; she asked me."

Mrs. Le Marchant strikes her hands together, and gives utterance to that short and shapeless monosyllable which has a prescriptive right to express vexation.

"Th! th!" A moment later, "I am sure you will understand that I do not mean to imply any ill-will to you; but it is unlucky that we should have happened to meet you here; it has brought it all back to her, and she was just beginning to pluck up her spirits a little."

"Did she—did she take it so much to heart?" inquires Jim, in a tone of almost as awed concern as Elizabeth had employed but a quarter of an hour before in putting nearly the same question with regard to Byng.

"Did she take it to heart!" repeats Mrs. Le Marchant, with the irritation of one to whom a perfectly senseless and superfluous inquiry is put; "why, of course she did! I thought at one time that she would have gone out of her mind!"

No one can feel less merry than Jim; and yet his lips at this juncture cannot resist the impulse to frame themselves into a gloomy smile.

"And I thought that he would have gone out of his mind," he rejoins.

As he speaks, it flashes upon his memory that one of the hypotheses that have formerly occurred to him to account for the mystery that hangs over Elizabeth's past was that she had been mad; and though he had long abandoned the idea, her losing her wits now recurs to him with a shock as a possibility. Might not that changeful, mobile, emotional mind lose its balance under the blow either of a sudden calamity or of a long wearing sorrow? It has escaped—evidently but barely escaped the first. Will it escape the second too?

His heart goes out in a great yearning to her at the thought of what a touching little lunatic she would make; and, with an oblivion of his own personal feelings, which is generous, if not very lasting, he says compassionately:

"It seems a pity—a great pity!"

"A pity!" repeats the mother, with a sort of wrath, down which he detects a broad stripe of agony running; "I should think it was a pity! Pity is a weak word! The whole thing is piteous! her whole history! If you only knew——"

She breaks off.

He is silent, waiting to see whether that impulse towards confidence in him will go any further; but it does not. She has evidently gone beyond her intention, and is passionately vexed with herself for having done so.

"They were so well suited to each other," continues Jim slowly, but still generously. Possibly his generosity becomes more easy as he sees how hopeless is the plea upon which he employs it. "Is it—I do not wish to intrude upon your confidence, but in the interests of my friend you will allow me to say that much—is it quite out of the question?"

"Quite! quite!" replies the mother, in painful excitement; "what, poor soul, is not out of the question for her that has any good or happiness in it? and that—that more than anything! If you have any mercy in you, do not put it into her head that it is not!"

"If it is not in her head already, I could not put it there," replies Jim gravely; "but I will not—I promise you I will not."

As he speaks, a slight smile touches the corners of his serious mouth as he reflects how entirely easy it is to comply with a request not to urge Byng's suit upon its object, and how cheaply a character for magnanimity may sometimes be bought.

"That is very kind of you!" replies the poor woman gratefully; "and I am sure when you say a thing I can depend upon you for it; and though, of course, it was unlucky our happening to meet you, yet you need not see much of her. Although it is not in the least 'out of sight, out of mind' with her"—sighing—"yet she is very much influenced by the objects around her; and when you are gone—I dare say you do not mean to make a long stay; this is not a place where there is much for a man to do—for a man like you——"

She breaks off, and her imploring eye invites him to reassure her by naming a speedy day for his own departure. But magnanimity may have calls made upon it that exceed its power to answer, and Jim's silence sufficiently proves that he is not going to allow himself to be seduced into a promise to go.