James laughed. He would much have liked to confide the story to Arthur; but somehow he felt that Hugh regarded it so seriously that he could not tell it as a good joke, in which light Arthur, never having seen Violante, would be almost sure to regard it. A few hours soon showed him the truth of his cousin’s remarks. Hugh, though somewhat condescending, was generally courteous and obliging enough; but the captious way in which he complained of the approaching dinner-party, and the spiteful comments he made on Miss Clinton’s manners and looks, his scornful laugh at Arthur’s open boyish love-making, were the spray that indicated the waters of a bitter fountain. But he did not soften, even to his brother; on the contrary, with defiant bravado, he referred to the subject, asking James if he did not triumph in the result of his predictions that all would soon be as if his foolish fancy had never come to disturb him.
James was not a person to stir the waters, even with a view to their final sweetening. He disliked a fuss too much to face the matter out. He did not sympathise with the feelings which he supposed to exist in Hugh’s breast; it was better to suppose the thing a trifle, after all; so he answered:
“Oh, well, no one’s the worse for a bit of romance in their life.”
“To supply them with pleasant memories, eh? You’ve hit it exactly.”
Hugh said no more, but a sense of contempt for the brother who was his only confidant added to the loneliness that oppressed him. In this humour, to sit down to dinner with Mrs Harcourt on one side of him and Miss Clinton on the other seemed intolerable thraldom, and every subject more unprofitable than the one before it. He was so inharmonious a host that the discussion on local politics grew rather warm, though Mrs Crichton sat smiling through any amount of “gentlemen’s talk.” James wondered how anyone could excite themselves over drainage and rights of way; and Arthur strenuously entertained the neglected ladies on either side of him, glinting in between-times at Mysie as she sat far away on the other side of the table. He was the first to propose music after dinner, and Flossy was the first lady to accede to his request.
She stood up, erect, fair, and rosy, and began to sing, clearly and correctly, her last Italian song: “Batti, batti.”
Flossy was tolerably self-confident. She had a good voice and ear, and she sang her Italian better than is usual with young ladies, sure of applause at the end. She little knew how her first notes startled two of her audience. James gave a great jump. “Profanation!” he murmured, as he thought of the exquisite voice and accent in which he had last heard the words uttered, of the lovely scared eyes that had so belied their meaning. Jem smiled and sighed and drew nearer to listen, full of the “associations” of the song, even while he glanced round to see how his brother had taken it.
There is a vast gulf between passion and sentiment, and Hugh was too much under the dominion of the one to endure the other. He did not wait for the second line of the song, but turned and escaped from it out into the warm twilight garden, where the clear, strong notes pursued him relentlessly. He sat down on a bench and hid his face in his hands. “Violante! Violante!” he cried, half aloud. “Oh, what a fool I was not to wait one moment longer! Then I should have been sure! What is the use of it all—” And then Hugh got up and laughed, keenly conscious of the absurdity of sitting here in his dress-coat lamenting; hating himself for his folly, and yet haunted by the old, soft accents: “I was frightened, Signor Hugo.”
Suddenly the quiet garden seemed filled with chattering and laughing. All the younger ones had streamed out on to the terrace, and were wandering about in twos and threes. Arthur had Mysie to himself at last, and as they wandered past Hugh’s hiding-place, he heard her say, mischievously, something about “Katie’s charming conversation,” and Arthur retort with “That curate that was sitting by you;” and then she threw a rose at him and they both laughed, till Hugh muttered passionately to himself: “I wish I had never got to hear them play the fool and laugh again.”