"Go, child; go."
Still Eva stood there, her eyes fixed upon the long window veiled in lace; she scarcely seemed to breathe.
Her mother was driven to stronger measures. "You told me yourself that he cared nothing for you."
A deep red rose in Eva's cheeks; she turned and left the terrace by the distant door.
The mother crossed slowly to the long window and parted the curtains. "Mr. Rod, are you there? Won't you come out? Or stay—I will join you." She entered the drawing-room and took a seat.
Rod explained that he was about to leave Sorrento; Bartholomew had summoned him so urgently that he did not like to refuse, though it was very inconvenient to go at such short notice.
"Then you leave to-morrow?" said Fanny; "perhaps to-night?"
"No; on Monday. I could not arrange my business before."
"Three days more," Fanny thought.
She talked of various matters; she hoped that some one else would come in; but, by a chance, no one appeared that day, neither Dallas, nor Ferguson, nor Gordon-Gray. "What can have become of them?" she thought, with irritation. After a while she gave an inward start; she had become conscious of a foot-fall passing to and fro behind the half-open door near her—a door which led into the dining-room. It was a very soft foot-fall upon a thick carpet, but she recognized it: it was Eva. She was there—why? The mother could think of no good reason. Her heart began to beat more quickly; for the first time in her life she did not know her child. This person walking up and down behind that door so insistently, this was not Eva. Eva was docile; this person was not docile. What would be done next? She felt strangely frightened. It was a proof of her terror that she did not dare to close the door lest it should be instantly reopened. She began to watch every word she said to Rod, who had not perceived the foot-fall. She began to be extraordinarily polite to him; she stumbled through the most irrelevant complimentary sentences. Her dread was, every minute, lest Eva should appear.