When Rosamund opened the door of her cousin’s sitting-room, she found a
person on the other side of it whom she had not expected to meet and who
was in the act of taking his leave. He was a young man of finished and
intelligent aspect, and he came towards her with an expression of
pleasure.
“How fortunate!” he exclaimed. “If I had left a moment earlier I should
have missed you. How delightful to see you again!”
Rosamund was surprised, and, like many shy people, lost her wits at an
unexpected meeting; so she merely said nothing and smiled.
Mrs. Molesworth’s face expressed an unusual benignity, and the girl had
the impression that the visitor had been with her some time. He paused
at the threshold as he was going out.
“Have you anything to do on Saturday?” he asked, turning to the elder
woman.
“We have no plans,” she replied.
“Then, will you come and have tea with me? If you will, we could arrange
our expedition to see the picture I spoke of. It is a new discovery,
Miss Slade, a Cima, I believe, and I want you and Mrs. Molesworth to
come with me to see it one day. Would that suit you?”
“Perfectly,” said the lady.
“Capital. Then I will take myself away. This really has been a ‘billet
de logement,’ not a visit. Good-bye! Good-bye, Miss Slade!”
And he bowed himself out.
“He really is very cultivated,” remarked Mrs. Molesworth, when the door
had closed behind him.
Maurice Hopton got into his gondola, pleased with himself and the world
in general, more especially with the former; he floated along, thinking
what a sensible fellow he was, and he fairly blessed Fate for having
brought him within range of the very people of all others whom he
especially wished to meet.
In the early part of the year he had made the acquaintance of the
Molesworth party, during a short time when he was in Florence, and had
been a good deal in the society of the two women. He had not known them
long before his active mind sought to discover more about them, and he
accordingly wrote to a friend whose name he had heard them mention for
all particulars. A sentence in the reply which his letter did not fail
to bring decided him as to whether they were acquaintances worth keeping
or not. It ran thus:
“As for the girl, she will have _at least_ four or five thousand a year.
My dear chap, you seem to have lit on your feet, for, of course, you
will not neglect such opportunities. However, there is no need for me to
remind you of them, unless your foreign life has changed you a good
bit.”
Maurice carefully burned the letter in the stove which did duty for a
fireplace, and became more friendly than ever with Mrs. Molesworth. The
more he saw of her, the more plain it became to him that he would have a
difficult part to play. That she wished to arrange matters between
Heathcote and Rosamund he soon found out; and from it he gathered that,
for the moment at any rate, he had better direct his attentions to her,
and to her alone. So he applied himself steadily to the work of getting
into her good graces and making himself useful, and as his knowledge of
Italian was great, and his ideas on art highly developed, he proved a
most desirable companion to so indefatigable a sightseer. In a short
time she fancied she could do nothing without his help.
As for Rosamund, she thought Maurice very clever, and wished that he
would talk to her as he did to her cousin. But he was too wise. He knew
that the slightest show of his hand would be fatal, so he waited.
But he waited a little too long; and one day Mrs. Molesworth, who had a
habit of making her plans suddenly, announced to him that she intended
leaving for Bologna the following week. Maurice was thunderstruck; he
had quite counted on her staying in Florence till May. His first idea
was to press matters on, and speak to Rosamund before her departure;
but, after a sleepless night and a long discussion with himself, he came
to the very sensible conclusion that things were by no means far enough
advanced to admit of his doing so, and that he had better occupy all his
remaining time in making his position still stronger with the elder
woman, trusting to his luck and judgment for meeting them again.
So the week passed, and he saw his friends off from the station, with
many regrets and hopes of meeting which were cordially echoed by Mrs.
Molesworth; who, as the train moved away, stood graciously at the
carriage window waving her hand from behind the immense bouquet with
which he had presented her.
Maurice had rooms in Venice, which he made his headquarters during the
summer and autumn. Italy suited his purse as well as his tastes, and he
found himself able to live in luxury, keeping a gondola and his
establishment of two servants on about half the money he would have
spent in England. He had a wonderful knack of picking up pretty things,
which made his rooms the admiration of his friends. Altogether he took
life comfortably.
“Rosamund,” said Mrs. Molesworth, as they sat at breakfast a few days
later, “didn’t I hear you say that you wanted to see the Public Garden?”
“Yes,” replied Rose, looking up. “Can we go there to-day?”
“I don’t think _I_ shall,” replied her cousin; “but there is no reason
why Heathcote should not take you there this morning.”
Rosamund’s face fell, and she opened her mouth to speak, but gave a
little gasp and shut it again. Of all things in the world she hated
going anywhere with Heathcote; generally he was so surly and
unsympathetic that it took all her pleasure away, and after a talk with
his mother he was sometimes still worse, because of his clumsy attempts
at love-making. She was sure now that Mrs. Molesworth had been talking
to him.
She would have given a great deal to be spared from going with him, for,
as she had determined that there could be but one answer to the question
she knew he would ask, she was both exasperated and miserable. She could
not refuse to go without giving her real reason, which was out of the
question.
There was a bad time coming, and she dreaded it. She was very silent
through breakfast, and, when it was over, she went up to her room.
Rosamund was, by nature, one of those gentle people who, when once they
have made up their minds to a course of action, stick to it with
wonderful persistency, and she now determined that the time had come for
her to make an effort on her own behalf. “If,” she said to herself,
“Heathcote says anything to me to-day, as soon as I come home I will
write to Sir George Dawson, and tell him that I have no peace here, and
ask him if it isn’t possible for me to go somewhere else. It’s all
because of my wretched money!”
She was turning from the glass, when a loud knock sounded upon the door.
“I say, Rosamund,” shouted Heathcote from the passage, “what do you say
to going to the Public Garden this morning? Will you come?”
Rose smiled an odd little bitter smile, and opened the door.
“Come along,” he said awkwardly, and with a backward jerk of his head,
“let’s be off as soon as we can, if you’ll go.”
“Very well,” said Rose, who, now that her mind was made up, felt her
courage rising, “I’ll put on my things at once.”
“Come down to the steps when you’re ready, and I’ll get a boat and wait
there for you. Don’t be long.”
She shut the door and began putting on her hat; then she took up a pair
of gloves, looked out to see if Heathcote were at the landing-place,
and, observing him angrily haranguing a large gondolier who did not
understand a word he said, she hurried downstairs and out on to the
Riva.
“I can’t make out whether this fool is engaged or not,” he growled, as
he saw her standing beside him.
The gondolier shrugged his shoulders; he had a clear hour and a half, he
said, but after that he must go for an American family at the Hôtel
Roma.
“We shan’t be longer than that,” said Rosamund, thankfully seizing a
chance of putting a limit to their travels and stepping into the boat.
It would be difficult to say which of the cousins was most uncomfortable
during that short voyage. Heathcote, oppressed by the sense of not
knowing how he should begin, never opened his mouth, except to answer
the few remarks that Rosamund made. The gondolier thought them the
dullest pair he had ever rowed.
At last they glided up alongside the red wall and the steps which led
from the water to the Garden, and Heathcote, with a sudden access of
politeness, jumped out and offered his hand to his cousin. She just
touched it as she put her foot ashore, then went up the steps and paused
at the top.
“Shall we tell him to stay?” he called up to her.
“I think so,” she answered; and, as she leaned over the balustrade, she
met his eyes. He turned them quickly away.
In another minute the two were walking along the green turf, neither
knowing where they intended going, although they stepped briskly along,
as though they had some definite object in view. But the width of the
peninsula which forms the Giardino Publico is not very great, and they
were soon brought to a standstill by finding themselves in front of the
balustrade which runs the whole way round it. Rose went up to the edge
and looked over at a couple of boatmen who had moored up to an iron ring
in the wall, and were enjoying a sumptuous feast of crabs and
lettuce-leaves in the shade; while Heathcote stood behind her, punching
holes in the ground with his stick and feeling profoundly miserable.
“There’s a splendid view from this place,” observed Rosamund, when she
had exhausted her interest in the two Italians; “but it was to see the
garden that we came, so we had better do so. Shall we go this way?” and
she pointed to a path edged with shrubs and leading away somewhere
between the greenery.
Heathcote wished that it _had_ been to see the garden that they had
come, and felt, as he walked along beside her, that he must start upon
the matter in hand at once and have done with it.
“Look here, let’s sit down,” he said, as they passed a wooden bench;
“it’s too hot to go plunging about in the sun like this, and--and I’ve
got something to say to you.”
“Well,” said Rose, looking straight at him as they seated themselves,
“what is it?”
“Surely you know,” he stammered, “what I want to tell you.”
“Go on,” she said, still looking at him, and wondering at her own
coolness.
“Rosamund, will you marry me?”
“Do you remember the last time you asked me that?”
He did not reply for a moment.
“Do you remember it?” repeated Rose, almost fiercely, her face flushing.
“Of course I do,” he answered; “but that’s got nothing to do with it.”
“It has--everything. Have you forgotten what I said then? Well, I have
not changed, and I say the same thing now.”
“But, Rose----”
“It’s no use, Heathcote. I have made up my mind.”
“It’s very hard on me,” said the young man pettishly, “when I try my
best to please you, that you should be like this. One would think, to
listen to you, that I had done you an injury in asking you.”
“So you do,” she replied, “when you persist in a thing that I asked you
to leave alone before.”
“Well, all I can say is, I think it’s very hard that you won’t even
listen, for it isn’t only for myself that I feel it. Think how fond my
mother is of you, and how she would like it,” he went on.
Heathcote was not happy in his choice of arguments.
“I think,” she remarked sharply, “that Cousin Julia would like it better
than you would. But, at any rate, there is no use in talking, Heathcote.
Come, let us go home. We have only been here a quarter of an hour; but
I think we have both had enough.”
And she got up and went back down the path.
Heathcote sat for a moment looking after her, then he rose and followed.
“Rose! Do stop. Just think how unhappy you are making me!” he cried,
conscious that he had made no very valiant resistance against her
decision, and that he would be narrowly questioned when he got home.
“Can’t you change your mind and think about it? Do, like a dear girl.”
Rosamund did not even turn round.
“I’m going home,” she said, without looking back.
When they arrived at the Hôtel d’Angleterre Heathcote did not choose to
go in at once, for he knew that his mother was waiting for him, and he
had no desire to face her just then; so he left Rose at the door and
went off into the Piazza.
Mrs. Molesworth was reading at her sitting-room window, and as she saw
the two land, she wondered a good deal at their being back so early. She
put down her book and watched them walking up to the house, and, when
the balcony hid them from her sight, she sat still and listened for
their coming.
The Hôtel d’Angleterre, like many hotels in Venice, had in former days
been a palace, and, the main staircase being of marble, every footfall
which ascended or descended was audible; so presently she heard
Rosamund’s step come up and pass the door on the way to her own room.
Wondering what had become of Heathcote, she rose, with a frown of
impatience, and went out on the balcony. There he was, leisurely making
his way to the Piazza. She was a good deal provoked at his not having
come in to tell her the result of his proposal, and, as she could not go
upstairs and find it out from Rose, she sat down and tried to go on with
her reading. But her thoughts refused to fix themselves on the book.
Rosamund was sitting in her room, her hat still on, with a little
leather writing-case upon her knee, writing busily. On her way home from
the Public Garden she had occupied herself in composing her intended
letter to her guardian, and, coming in, she sat down and wrote it
straight off. When it was finished, she re-read it carefully, and,
having sealed and directed it, put it in her pocket and went down to the
hall.
The porter was sitting at his bureau at the door doing nothing, or
rather, he was drumming his fingers up and down on his knees, and
contemplating a grey kitten which sat demurely licking its paw on the
desk beside him.
“Please have this posted as soon as possible,” said Rose, handing in the
envelope to him through the opening in his glass prison.
She had a guilty feeling, now that the deed was done, though in her
heart she was sure she had acted rightly; but she glanced nervously over
her shoulder as she gave the man the letter, and wished herself safely
upstairs.
He reached down his gold-banded hat from the nail on which it hung.
She turned to go, but, as a shadow crossed the doorway, she looked round
and saw Heathcote, who was returning from the Piazza, where he had found
nothing to amuse him. She gave a violent start and turned crimson; then,
not knowing exactly what to do, went upstairs without a word.
Heathcote, though not gifted with a brilliant intellect, had that kind
of sharpness about everything concerning himself rarely absent in
selfish people; so, having heard the porter’s words and noticed Rose’s
consternation at his appearance, his curiosity was roused, and he
suspected that this letter, which required so much haste, had something
to do with the morning’s events. He stood till she had turned the corner
of the staircase, and, when the porter passed him with the letter in his
hand, he stopped him.
“Give me that,” he said. “If it is for England, I don’t think Miss Slade
has put the right stamp on it.”
The man gave it to him; he knew him to be the young lady’s cousin and he
took his words in good faith.
Heathcote glanced at the address: “Sir George Dawson, Bart., Dawsfield
Park, Sussex, Inghilterra.”
“It’s all right,” he said, as he gave it back; “that’ll do. Deuce take
her,” he thought, as he went upstairs, “I wonder what on earth she has
been writing about?”
But he had a pretty good idea.
He paused outside his mother’s sitting-room door, deliberating whether
he should go in or not, and, though he had little desire for an
examination upon all he had said and done that morning, an overwhelming
wish to tell what he had just seen, coupled with the fact that he had
nowhere else to go, made him enter.