The subject in its various branches lasted for some time, and when the ladies went away Arthur continued it:
“I don’t suppose Freddie does know all about her. You know she was engaged to the manager of the opera-house there, and he threw her over when she lost her voice. So the poor little thing was fretting her heart out.”
“How do you know?” said Hugh, with a sense of being suffocated.
“Oh, there was an old cantatrice who had charge of the sisters, and she used to talk to me. And one could see the poor child was unhappy—indeed, she owned as much.”
“She would be quite pleased to see you again.”
“Well, I daresay she would,” said Arthur, carelessly; “but I don’t suppose Miss Venning would allow—” He stopped, as the words suggested a different recollection, and after a moment went on, gravely:
“Hugh, I don’t want to lose any more time. You will let me begin work to-morrow?”
“If you wish it,” said Hugh, without looking at him. “You can do as you wish always.”
“Thanks; you’re very good, Hugh. I’ll do my best. You’ll be patient?”
Poor boy, he was naturally outspoken, and wanted, perhaps, a word of sympathy and support in this painful home-coming; but Hugh only answered, as they left the room: “I could not be otherwise,” and the coldness of the tone neutralised the kindness of the words. He lingered behind as Arthur turned towards the drawing-room, and went into his study. He would not have believed beforehand how little he would have thought about his cousin on that first day of meeting, which he had dreaded so much beforehand. His cold, short answers had come, not from embarrassment, but because he was wholly absorbed in something else. Had he avoided Violante to find her close at his side? Had he really passed her every morning and evening? Ah—and the violets—he had thrown them away! Perhaps this fact gave to the sensible Mr Spencer Crichton the keenest sense of lost opportunity that he had ever experienced. She had not, then, forgotten him. Had she come there knowing of his neighbourhood? Or had she really never cared for him at all? Arthur confirmed her engagement to the manager, and seemed well-informed, much too well-informed as to her sentiments with regard to the breach of it. Hugh was not naturally trustful, and through all his passion he had never trusted Violante, never forgotten that she was a foreigner and of altogether different training from his own. Besides, she had been false to him. He had seen her with the diamonds on her neck—he had been deceived by her confiding softness—hadn’t she been just as ready to tell her troubles to Arthur as to himself? At home Hugh was much more convinced of the unsuitableness of his choice than he had been in Italy; and now, after all that had passed, what right had he to create such a family convulsion as would be caused by any renewal of it? His love remained, but the charm of it seemed to have faded. The bitter hours he had lately passed had half awakened him from his dazzling holiday dream, taking from it the force it might else have had to bend his pride to own what had been passing in his mind all the summer, and to shake the conviction that had a sort of uncomfortable attraction to him—that he had lost the right to choose his own happiness against the pleasure of his family. How could he say to his mother now, “Consent to this—I cannot live without her,”—when, through him, Arthur must live without his love? To do so he must have been careless and selfish—and Hugh was neither, in intention, or he must have been able to sound the depths and rise to the height of a humility of which he could not even conceive. Besides, this unlucky love paid the penalty of all feelings that are unlikely and, as it were, against the nature and the circumstances of those who experience them. It was sweet and enticing, but it was insecure and beset by doubts and misgivings.