To Violet that darkness consisted of her own ignorance, or so she felt it, of what Colin really was, and in proportion as she began to guess at him, it grew of more nightmare-like impenetrability. He had his moods of entrancing charm, of eager affection, but now these seemed more like some will-o’-the-wisp dancing above a marsh, than a flame that while it consumed, yet fed her and warmed her. His light was not meant for her, it only happened to fall on her; she was in the circle of its brightness.
She could not avoid pursuing the thought and seeing where it led her. She could see no change in him, she perceived that he had always been like this, and that it was her own light, so to speak, the illumination of her love which had revealed him to her.
She began to question who or what it was that shed that charm and evoked that enchantment, and shuddered at her own conjecture. Hints as to that came from other quarters: there was his complete indifference as to his father’s health; true, Lord Yardley had told him not to worry, for there was no cause for that, but how could the son of so devoted a father be so immune to any sort of anxiety? Not less significant was his attitude towards Raymond, that, namely, of contemptuous hate. He despised Raymond (that was clear) for his failure to kill him, he hated him, not for having made his attempt so much as for being Raymond.
And there was a puzzle for Violet. Raymond, from what Colin had told her, could now never stand in his way; and at Lord Yardley’s death he would simply cease to exist as an obstacle to all that Colin desired. But Colin still hated; it was just the fact of Raymond, not the fact of Raymond having planned to kill him. And there, indeed, was a true flame burning. Colin’s feeling about Raymond had an authentic heat of its own. Hate, in fact, was real to him in a way that love was not.
There was yet one more puzzle. Colin was determined to spend the night at the house of the British Consul in Naples. Not once or twice only, but constantly, he alluded to this. If he wanted it, Violet knew that he would get it, and for herself it made no great matter. She considered Mr. Cecil a “little red bounder,” as Colin had phrased it, and could not understand his insistence on the point. He got impatient now when, he having alluded to their night in Naples, she asked why he wanted it, and his answer, the same as ever, that it would please Mr. Cecil, who was a useful little red bounder, carried no conviction. There was something behind and she could not conceive what it was.
The day of their departure was still uncertain, when a second morning of driving rain caused Colin to come down to breakfast with his mind made up.
“It’s quite intolerable,” he said. “Capri without the heat and sun is like a pantomime without the fairies. What a cursed place; it only exists in the summer. Let’s go to-day, Vi. We’ll catch the midday boat.”
“But it goes in two hours,” said she.
“The sooner the better.”
“But, darling....” she said.