“Jem, you profess to understand young women. Which should you have said was the favoured one?”
Jem was driven into a corner. He certainly had thought that Violante had favoured Hugh. He thought so still, and felt pretty sure that she was not a free agent; but he did not wish to say so, and yet he could not but be touched by the eager wistful look with which Hugh regarded him.
“Well,” he said, “I thought she looked graciously on you; but you see the—”
“If so,” interrupted Hugh, “I’d marry her to-morrow, spite of them all.”
“Good heavens, Hugh!” cried Jem. “Don’t think of such a thing! I don’t believe Tollemache would consent. It’s impossible!”
“Tollemache?”
“British Consul, you know. You can’t get married out here as if it was Gretna Green; and I won’t have a hand in it; I declare, Hugh, I won’t,” cried Jem. “It’s all very well, but I won’t, you know; and there’s an end of it.”
“I did not ask you,” said Hugh, coldly, but becoming conscious that to marry Violante without the consent of her friends or his was, under the circumstances, utterly impossible.
He said no more to James, but resolved to see Violante once again at all hazards. How he saw her, and what effect the scene he beheld had on a mind already full of doubts and suspicions, has been already told. Anger, intensified by the recollection of how he had once before been treated, swallowed up every other feeling. He went back to the Consulate and met his brother on the stairs.
“I shall go home, Jem,” he said. “I cannot stay here. You can explain and follow when you like. Yes, it’s all at an end. Never speak of it any more.”