Somewhat to Mrs. Meredith’s and also to Kyrle’s own surprise, he had no incivility to encounter from any of the Joscelyns when he joined their party on the Lido that afternoon. The heads of the family received him courteously, if stiffly, and Miss Joscelyn greeted him like an old friend. Indeed, by what means he could not for the life of him tell, she soon managed to monopolize his attention, calling upon him for the little services which no gentleman can refuse to render to a woman, and presently drawing him aside from the rest of the party to walk with her on the beach, while she discoursed to him of many things in heaven and earth which did not interest him in the least. His judgment upon her, meanwhile, was uncompromising.
“A mass of silliness and affectation,” he said to himself, but in this he did her some injustice. She was not only less silly than he imagined—possessing, in fact, a good deal of shrewdness—but at the present time she had an object in view in her discursive conversation which his irritated and distracted mind was far from perceiving.
For it is to be feared that, had pearls of wit and wisdom dropped from her lips, they would have fallen on equally inattentive ears. Kyrle had said sternly to himself, while on his way to the Lido, that he would be very careful not to devote himself to Aimée; that, because she had asked him to remain in Venice, he was the more bound not to cause her the faintest shadow of annoyance by attentions that might be misconstrued; and that he would only allow himself the pleasure of seeing and of talking to her, as any other chance acquaintance might. But to renounce voluntarily some happiness for which Nature longs is one thing, and to have it forcibly placed beyond reach by outside agency is another. Even if the happiness in question is no more than looking into a pair of soft, dark eyes, and listening to ordinary sentences uttered in a sweet voice, one may be supported in voluntary renunciation by a sense of virtue which is altogether lacking in feeling that the matter is taken out of one’s own power. So Kyrle chafed inwardly against the quiet but resolute hold of Miss Joscelyn upon his attention, even while he said to himself that it was in a degree what he had intended, and that he was glad of an opportunity to prove to these people what an absurd fiction it was that he had ever been Aimée’s lover.
Yet all the time he was conscious of an insistent desire, the hunger of the heart which comes with love, to renew the charm of that half hour in the atrium of St. Mark’s, to take up the thread of conversation where they had dropped it, and feel again that sense of sympathy and comradeship, of understanding and being understood, which had quickened all his being into new life. And, instead of this, he was pacing the beach with Lydia Joscelyn, and lending half an ear to what he called in his own mind empty twaddle.
Twaddle it might be, but empty—that is, devoid of meaning—it was not. Lydia, with an art which did her credit, approached slowly but surely to the point she had distinctly in view; and presently she touched it.
“Percy tells me that you sing beautifully, Mr. Kyrle,” she said. “He declares that he never heard anything finer than your singing in the gondola last night. You must come out with us to-night and let me hear you. I adore fine singing. I wonder that Aimée never mentioned that you had such a fine voice.”
Kyrle, roused from partial abstraction by the sound of Aimée’s name, fell unconsciously into the trap. “I do not think that Miss Vincent knew anything about my voice,” he replied, “so it would have been difficult for her to say anything about it.”
“No!” said his companion, opening her eyes. “I thought I had understood that you were quite old friends.”
This roused him thoroughly, for the tone implied much more than the words. The indignation which was ever ready to be excited on this point rose within him, as it had risen before that day. He determined that nothing should induce him to lend his aid to Fanny Berrien’s deception, and allow these people to fancy injurious things of Aimée. Miss Joscelyn was a little startled by the haughtiness of his glance as he turned it on her.