‘I don’t care for most people’s children, but I should for yours.’
‘You are very good to say so’, replies Sir Roland: but he knows they are treading on dangerous ground, and the subject had better be dropped. As he lies in his berth that night, and thinks over the events of the day, he remembers how his wife told him before their marriage that she disliked children, and he had twitted her with the fact on seeing her devotion to their firstborn. And he recalls how she had looked into his face with her large blue eyes—so clear and lovely and loving as they were in those days—and whispered, ‘But this is yours, Roland.’ There is something like a tear in Sir Roland Tresham’s eye as he turns uneasily in his berth, and thinks how those happy days have faded; but it is of Juliet, and not of Mabel, he dreams as he falls asleep. The Honourable Mrs Carnaby-Hicks sees the flirtation going on between her niece and her brother, but does not concern herself in the matter. Miss Moore knows what she is about, and is perfectly able to take care of herself; indeed, Mrs Carnaby-Hicks thinks she can already discern the instinct by which the young lady is guided. But Sir Roland, who can only interpret her words and glances by his own lights, believes himself to be on the verge of a precipice, and yet has not the moral courage to fly from a temptation that is so flattering to his vanity. Mabel’s chief weapon is melancholy. She professes melancholy whenever it occurs to her, until Sir Roland is forced to demand the reason of her serious looks.
‘How can you ask?’ she says one evening—the first of their arrival in Venice—‘when you know that auntie has asked Lord Ernest Freemantle to join our party to-morrow?’
‘What difference will that make to us?’
‘Why, will he not expect to be always by my side, and break in upon the pleasant têtes-à-tête we have had together?’
‘Have they been so very pleasant to you then, Mabel?’
‘Oh, Sir Roland, cannot you judge of my feelings by your own?’
‘If I did that—’ he commences fervently, but there he stops. The vision of two blue eyes, dimmed with tears, rises before him, and he stamps the temptation down.
‘Whatever I may feel,’ he says to himself afterwards, ‘I will not allow my tongue to turn traitor,’ and so Miss Moore is disappointed of her answer.