This was encouragement to persevere, and I praised the Contessa to him when we happened to be alone together. "You have a short memory it seems," said he. "You told me not so long ago that you'd been in love with a girl who jilted you. Have you forgotten her already?"
I winced under this thrust, but hoped that the Boy did not see it. His stab reminded me that I had found very little time lately to regret Miss Blantock, now Lady Jerveyson; and Molly Winston's words recurred to me: "If I could only prove to you that you aren't and never have been in love with Helen." I had retorted that to accomplish this would be difficult, and she had confidently replied that she would engage to do it, if I would "take her prescription." I had taken her prescription, and—indisputably the wound had become callous, though I was not prepared to admit that it had healed. However, if I had ceased actively to mourn the grocer's triumph, it was not Gaetà who had wrought the magic change. What had caused it I was myself at a loss to understand, but I did not wish to argue the matter with the Boy. He was welcome to think what he chose.
"Hearts are caught in the rebound sometimes, if for once a proverb can be right," said I evasively; though a few weeks ago, when Molly had been constantly alluding to her friend Mercédès, I had told myself that no one could achieve such a feat with mine.
To this suggestion the Boy made no response, save to tighten his lips, resolving, I supposed, that if hearts were flying about like shuttlecocks, his battledore should be ready to catch the Contessa's.
Our road from Chamounix to Annecy led us past gorges and over high precipices and among noble mountains, but my mind was no longer in a condition to receive or retain strong impressions of natural beauty. I was irritable and "out of myself," vainly wishing back the days when the Boy and I, undisturbed by feminine society, had travelled tranquilly, side by side, giving each other thought for thought.
"Nothing can be as it has been;
Better, so call it, only not the same,"
Browning said; and so, I feared, it would be after this with me.
We were all to stay at Annecy for a night and a day, the Contessa having announced that she and her friends would stop too; then Gaetà and the others were to go on to Aix-les-Bains by rail, and the Boy and I were to follow on foot, attended by our satellites. Later, we were to spend a few days at the Contessa's villa and get upon our way again, journeying south. But it did not seem to me that my little Pal and I would ever be as we had been before, even though we walked from Aix-les-Bains all the way down to the Riviera shoulder to shoulder. I had the will to be the same, but he was different now; and though we left Gaetà in the flesh at her villa, entertaining guests, Gaetà in the spirit would still flit between us as we went. The Boy would be thinking of her; I should know that he was thinking of her, and—there would be an end of our confidences.
The way, though kaleidoscopic with changing beauties, seemed long to Annecy. By the time that we arrived, after two days' going, the Contessa had eyes or dimples or laughter for no one but the Boy. Sometimes he was seized with sudden moods of rebellion against his new slavery, and was almost rude to her, saying things which she would not have forgiven readily from another, but the child-woman appeared to find a keen delight in forgiving him. Seeing the preference bestowed upon the young American, Paolo's brother and sister were inclined to make common cause with me.
In the garden of the old-fashioned hotel at Annecy where we all took up our headquarters, they came and encamped beside me, at a table near which I sat alone, smoking, after our first dinner in the place. A moment later Gaetà passed with the Boy, pacing slowly under the interlacing branches of the trees.