“How could I help it?” she said, drooping her head. “He did so much. It was like a network all round. Even mamma, poor mamma, she is so poor, you know, and he was kind—but I had things, I did manage that.” She had mechanically raised her hand to her throat as she spoke, and Phillis noticed that a slender gold chain which she generally wore was gone, and that she had neither earrings nor any bit of jewellery about her. “I couldn’t do anything for Clive, it was like a horrible nightmare, and what would have become of him but for Oliver? When this last letter came, another came too from Oliver, telling me a great deal. It did not seem worth while to make so much fuss about oneself, and so—I wrote and promised.” The tone in which she said those last words told much, and perhaps Phillis had herself had experience of that state of mind. She bent over and kissed her.
“Oh, my dear,” she said brokenly, “but you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t have done it!”
“It is done,” said the girl, clasping her hands round her knees, and looking out towards the old basilica with its domes. But Phillis saw there were tears in her eyes.
“Write and undo it,” she urged.
“No; I wouldn’t be so ungrateful for worlds. And at any rate it seems as if it would make him happy.” Phillis felt no satisfaction at this prospect. She was full of pity, yet almost angry with this young creature who was throwing away her own happiness, and, alas! other people’s too. Was this to be the end of what Phillis herself had done?—was no good to come out of her own pain? She hushed the cry of her heart almost angrily. “He did not love me, he did not love me,” she said to herself, “and this makes no difference. Only I hoped he would have been happy.”
Perhaps Bice felt that she could bear no more, for she jumped up.
“I have not heard their voices for a long while,” she said. “They can’t have gone without us! Or suppose we find the great iron door at the bottom shut?”
“Oh, there’s a bell. We shall see some one.”
Down on a lower tier they found Jack waiting. He explained that Mrs Leyton and Kitty had driven back with Mrs Masters, Captain Leyton was sketching the Arch of Constantine.
“And I am to see you home, if you’ll allow me. Are you cold? It’s not the most prudent thing in the world to sit about in the Coliseum, with all that water below you.”