Now, indeed, the dream began.
With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from _her_,
I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred
and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial
phrases all seemed to be some one else's. My voice sounded like an echo;
my heart was other where.
Still, the situation was not intolerable until the hour when afternoon
tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and her mother kept the
conversational pot boiling with a profusion of genteel commonplaces, and
I bore it, as one can bear mild purgatories when one is in sight of
heaven. I looked up at my sweetheart in the ebony frame, and I felt that
anything that might happen, any irresponsible imbecility, any bathos of
boredom, was nothing, if, after it all, _she_ came to me again.
And yet, when Mildred, too, looked at the portrait, and said, "What a
fine lady! One of your flames, Mr. Devigne?" I had a sickening sense of
impotent irritation, which became absolute torture when Mildred--how
could I ever have admired that chocolate-box barmaid style of
prettiness?--threw herself into the high-backed chair, covering the
needlework with her ridiculous flounces, and added, "Silence gives
consent! Who is it, Mr. Devigne? Tell us all about her: I am sure she
has a story."
Poor little Mildred, sitting there smiling, serene in her confidence
that her every word charmed me--sitting there with her rather pinched
waist, her rather tight boots, her rather vulgar voice--sitting in the
chair where my dear lady had sat when she told me her story! I could not
bear it.
"Don't sit there," I said; "it's not comfortable!"
But the girl would not be warned. With a laugh that set every nerve in
my body vibrating with annoyance, she said, "Oh, dear! mustn't I even
sit in the same chair as your black-velvet woman?"
I looked at the chair in the picture. It _was_ the same; and in her
chair Mildred was sitting. Then a horrible sense of the reality of
Mildred came upon me. Was all this a reality after all? But for
fortunate chance might Mildred have occupied, not only her chair, but
her place in my life? I rose.
"I hope you won't think me very rude," I said; "but I am obliged to go
out."