“Oh, he is almost always so of late. The coming here and the pleasure of meeting you rallied him for a moment, but I foresaw his depression would return. I believe it is the uncertainty, the never-ceasing terror of what next, is breaking him down; and if the blow fell at once, you would see him behave courageously and nobly.”
“He ought to get away from this as soon as possible,” said L'Estrange. “He met several acquaintances yesterday in Rome, and they teased him to come to them, and worried him to tell where he was stopping. In his present humor he could not go into society, but he is ashamed to his own heart to admit it.”
“Then why don't we go at once?” cried Julia.
“There's nothing to detain us here,” said L'Estrange, sorrowfully.
“Unless you mean to wait for my marriage,” said Julia, laughing, “though, possibly, Sir Marcus may not give me another chance.”
“Oh, Julia!”
“'Oh, Julia!' Well, dearest, I do say shocking things, there 's no doubt of it; but when I 've said them, I feel the subject off my conscience, and revert to it no more.”
“At all events,” said L'Estrange, after a moment of thought, “let us behave when we meet him as though this news was not bad. I know he will try to read in our faces what we think of it, and on every account it is better not to let him sink into depression.”
The day passed over in that discomfort which a false position so inevitably imposes. The apparent calm was a torture, and the efforts at gayety were but moments of actual pain. The sense of something impending was so poignant that at every stir—the opening of a door or the sound of a bell—there came over each a look of anxiety the most intense and eager. All their attempts at conversation were attended with a fear lest some unhappy expression, some ill-timed allusion might suggest the very thought they were struggling to suppress; and it was with a feeling of relief they parted and said good-night, where, at other times, there had been only regret at separating.
Day after day passed in the same forced and false tranquillity, the preparations for the approaching journey being the only relief to the intense anxiety that weighed like a load on each. At length, on the fifth morning, there came a letter to Augustus in the well-known hand of Sedley, and he hastened to his room to read it. Some sharp passages there had been between them of late on the subject of the compromise, and Bramleigh, in a moment of forgetfulness and anger, even went so far as to threaten that he would have recourse to the law to determine whether his agent had or had not overstepped the bounds of his authority, and engaged in arrangements at total variance to all his wishes and instructions. A calm but somewhat indignant reply from Sedley, however, recalled Bramleigh to reconsider his words, and even ask pardon for them, and since that day their intercourse had been more cordial and frank than ever. The present letter was very long, and quite plainly written, with a strong sense of the nature of him it was addressed to. For Sedley well knew the temper of the man,—his moods of high resolve and his moments of discouragement,—his desire to be equal to a great effort, and his terrible consciousness that his courage could not be relied on. The letter began thus:—