“No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she must be a very superior person,—rather proud, I suppose.”
“Proud, no,—that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very affable. But yet—”
“‘But yet—’ You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps, walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir Miles’s librarian,—Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney the adventurer!”
“As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character and honour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able and accomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage. But my mother would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the first in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist had lost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she is most sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards.”
“Hem!” Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot, while he continued carelessly: “Impossible to walk the streets and keep one’s boots out of the mire. Well—and you agree with your mother?”
“It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four years old, my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery at Laughton and say: ‘Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked down on you.’ And,” added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, “my mother would put in her word,—‘And those unstained women too, my Percival.’”
There was something noble and touching in the boy’s low accents as he said this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty and his frank, healthful innocence of character.
The devil in Varney’s lip sneered mockingly.
“My young friend, you have never loved yet. Do you think you ever shall?”
“I have dreamed that I could love one day. But I can wait.”