'Come now,' said Mr. Gregory. 'My sister will make you comfortable. Poor Jane's an old maid still, and lives with me.'
'Not now,' she said. 'There are many things to be seen to before we can leave here.'
I saw her glance at her own shabby dress, and he saw that also.
'When you like,' he said cheerfully. 'But this day week is a bargain. At what time? Say two o'clock. I'll be there to meet you. Good-day, Calvotti; good-day, Miriam.' Then he turned and kissed Cecilia. 'Good-day, Baby. God bless my soul! it seems only the other day since you were a baby. And now I suppose you'll be getting married in a week or two.'
Cecilia blushed and laughed, and Mr. Gregory turned round with a droll look to me, and then took his hat and went in his own solid and determined way out of the room. Even in his walk the determination of his character declared itself. He was strong and square and firm, but within very gentle. Oh, you English! you English! you are a great people! Great in your stolidity and solidity, before which I, who know what lives beneath them, can only bow in a fluttering, butterfly respect! Great in your passions, which you repress so splendidly that to the superficial eye they look only like affections! Solid, stolid, much-enduring people, with corners all over you, accept my profoundest veneration!
Now it befalls me that I am impelled to tell why, with a reputation already considerable and fast increasing, and with a balance at the banker's in the same beautiful conditions, I yet remained in that poor studio of mine, and in those unfashionable apartments. It was not that I am penurious, although I have changed my old harum-scarum habits with regard to money.
It was not—but why should I go on saying what it was not to pave the way to saying what it was? It was, then, that in that house had lived that little English angel who is a woman, and Cecilia. I will set it down in one line. She is all the joy I have and all the sorrow. And now I will set down one thing more that I may see it in plain black and white, and study it there until I drive its meaning into my thick head and my sore heart, and can at last smoke calm pipes over it, and be once more contented. There is no hope for me—there is no hope for me: none in the world. For my little Cecilia is in love already, and I would not for twenty thousand times my own sake have her in one thought untrue.
I was walking upstairs one night a month before the events I have just related, when I met a man coming down in the dark. I did not at all know who he was, but I knew that he had been to Miss Grammont's rooms, because I was already near my own door, and nobody but Miss Grammont lived above me. The stranger said Good-night as he passed me, and I returned his salutation. He stopped short.
'Have I the honour to address Mr. Calvotti?' he asked.
'That is my name,' I answered, in some astonishment.