Chapter Thirty Four.
All these things have ceased to be with my Desire of Life.
Mrs Leigh obeyed her son’s wish, and made the amende with all the gracious tact that could possibly be shown in dealing with so difficult a situation. It suited Lady Haredale much better to ignore the past than to keep up any kind of coldness. The Jacksons were a connecting link, with their eager seeking of Amethyst and Una; Lucian’s two young sisters were glad to resume friendly relations with Kattern and Tory, who had but newly joined their mother, with Miss Haredale and Carrie Carisbrooke.
It was a fortunate moment. Lord Haredale was away at Monte Carlo, and his wife, who, with what Una called “my lady’s dreadful capacity for enjoying herself,” had found friends of every sort on their travels, lost in some marvellous way the nameless look, shabby, “shady” (only some slang word could quite describe it), which had just a little tarnished her graceful ladyhood, when there were only shabby, shady people with whom to associate, and fitted at once into her old circle. Other residents and visitors called upon her, so that a time of cheerfulness and gaiety set in for all the young people, who met every day, and made expeditions together, which often began and ended in Mrs Leigh’s garden at Casa Remi. Amethyst came with the rest. If she had been deaf to Sylvester’s appeal, she could hardly have resisted the half-acknowledged misery in Mrs Leigh’s face. She was kind and gentle to Lucian, and her manner never betrayed under-currents of feeling; but the dreary months of dissatisfaction with herself and with her lot in life had stolen away her bloom, and she looked unhappy and weary.
Lucian could not talk to her much. As he had said, he lay and looked at her; but how life and death seemed to him, when she was in his sight, it was hard to tell. Sylvester sometimes feared that the pleasure, which he had so much desired, had been dearly bought. Surely that restraint must be hard for Lucian, which was so great a strain upon himself, but the wonder how it was with her, the fear that all was not well with her, the pity for the dying lover, and the passion that beat in his own heart, were almost more than he could bear.
“Syl,” said Lucian one day, after one of these gatherings, about three weeks after Amethyst’s first visit, “Syl, Amethyst isn’t happy.”
“No,” said Sylvester, a little startled, “I fear not; her life has many hardships.”
“I want to speak to her alone,” said Lucian, “our parting has always stung her. It’s bad for her to look back on; I think I can make it better. You’ll manage it, won’t you?”
“If it’s not too much for you, I will try.”
“I’ve got it to do,” said Lucian. “Get her to come by herself; I know what I want to say.”