“Is this sapphire band yours, Mother?”
“To be sure it is.”
“Well, Kitty, I think a deal of that ring. You must take great care of it.”
“So then, Mother, one of your rings has a story too, has it?” And there was a little laugh for answer, and Kitty slipped the coveted trinket on her finger, and held up her hand to admire the gleam of the jewels, as she said, musingly, “I wonder what Piers is doing?”
“I wouldn’t ‘wonder,’ dearie. Little troubles are often worrited into big troubles. If things are let alone, they work themselves right. I’ll warrant Piers is unhappy enough.”
But Mrs. Atheling’s warrant was hardly justified. Piers should have gone to the House; but he went instead to his room, threw himself among the cushions of a divan, and with a motion of his head indicated to his servant that he wanted his Turkish pipe. The strange inertia and indifference that had so suddenly assailed, still dominated him, and he had no desire to combat it. He was neither sick nor weary; yet he seemed to have lost all control over his feelings. Had the man within the man “gone off guard”? Have we not all–yes, we have all of us succumbed to just such intervals of supreme, inexpressible listlessness and insensibility? We are “not all there,” but where has our inner self gone to? And what is it doing? It gives us no account of such lapses.
Piers asked no questions of himself. He was like a man dreaming; for if his Will was not asleep, it was at least quiescent. He made no effort to control his thoughts, which drifted from Annabel to Kate, and from Kate to Annabel, in the vagrant, inconsequent manner which acknowledges neither the guidance of Reason or Will. And as the Levantine vapour lulled his brain, he felt a pleasure in this surrender of his noblest attributes. He thought of Annabel as he had seen her the previous evening, dressed in a shaded satin of blue and green, trimmed with the tips of peacock feathers. The same resplendent ornaments were in her strong, wavy, black hair, and round her throat was a necklace of emeralds and amethysts. “What a Duchess of Richmoor she would make!” he thought. “How stately and proud! How well she would wear the coronet and the gold strawberry leaves, and the crimson robe and ermine of her state dress! Yes, Annabel would be a proper Duchess; but–but–” and then he was sitting with Kate among the tall brackens, where the Yorkshire hills threw miles of shadow. She was in her riding dress; but her little velvet cap was in her hand, and the fresh wind was blowing her brown hair into bewitching tendrils about her lovely face. How well he knew the sweet seriousness of her downcast eyes, the rich bloom of her cheeks and lips, the tender smile with which she always answered his “Kate! Sweet Kate!”