"What do you mean?" asked Leonora with a little frown.
"Why—it must take a long time to show you how grateful I am. A long time," he added, his voice sinking to a deeper tone, that Leonora loved to hear. "It will take my whole lifetime, darling."
"Thanks, dear one," said she quietly, laying her hand on his. She did not mind the passengers,—why should she? She would never mind the world again, as long as she lived, for the world would never care what she did any more.
Her experience of the world—or of what she understood by the term—had not been very happy, though it had not been the reverse. She remembered chiefly the mere technicalities of society, so to speak. She had enjoyed them after a fashion, inveighing all the while against their emptiness and vanity, and now when she looked back she saw only a confused perspective of brilliantly lighted, noisy parties, of more or less solemn dinners, of endless visits to people who bored her, and of an occasional cotillion with a man she liked, in return for numberless dances with individuals who seemed to be trying to get dancing lessons gratis, or who tore furiously up and down the room till she was out of breath, or who caught their spurs in her skirts, and scratched her arms with their decorations. She did not remember how she had enjoyed motion for motion's sake, and had rarely refused to go out, in spite of the aforesaid annoyances. She did not remember the little thrills of pleasure she had felt, as Marcantonio was gradually attracted to her, till he was always the first to greet her and to put his name on her card for a turn, and was always the last to bid her good-night, devoting himself to her mother when she was engaged with some one else. She did not remember the delight she had often experienced in discussing society with her philosophical friends, bowling over institutions with a phrase and destroying characters with an adjective. There were many things which Leonora did not remember but which had given her great pleasure a few months ago; but most of them reminded her of her husband, and she did not wish to be reminded of him in the least.
There was continually a sort of unconscious comparison going on between him and Julius Batiscombe; she could not help it, and it had been perhaps the earliest phase of her love. Even at the moment when Marcantonio offered himself to her, Julius was standing in the doorway, and she had wondered what he would have said if he had been making the same proposal. She knew, now. She thought she knew the difference between the intonation of the man who loved, and of the man who merely wanted to marry. Ah—if she had only known in time, things would have been different. She would have refused Marcantonio, after all his devotion, and she would have married Julius.
She did not understand that Julius would never have fallen in love with her then; that the mere possibility of being led into marriage reared an impassable barrier between him and the whole of youngladydom. He had made up his mind that he would not marry, and young ladies said he was the most obstinate bore they knew; which was very unkind, for he kept out of their way, and only bored them when he was obliged to talk to them, doing it systematically and successfully in self-defence. But Leonora innocently supposed that if Julius had met her more intimately, in time, he would have fallen in love with her just as he had done now, and would have proposed after six weeks' acquaintance, and they would have been happy forever after. She chanced to think of this now, and she sighed.
"What is the matter, sweetheart?" asked Julius.
"Nothing," said she, "I was thinking of something,—that is all."
"Tell me, dear," said he, bending towards her. She hesitated a moment, looking into his eyes.
"I was thinking," she said at last, "of something that happened once. Do you remember, at that ball, when you stood in the doorway and looked so dreadfully bored, and I was sitting not far off with—with the marchese?"