“I beg pardon, I had forgotten to return your brooch.”
It was the first time that morning he had personally addressed her, and his doing so appeared to break the spell which had kept her silent; she took the brooch from him, murmuring some indistinct words of thanks, then gaining courage as she proceeded, she glanced at him appealingly, saying—
“Strange as this meeting is, I am sure I cannot be mistaken—Mr. Arundel, have you quite forgotten me?”
As she uttered these words a kind of spasm passed across Lewis’s face, and for a moment he appeared afraid to trust himself to speak; recovering, however, he replied in the same cold, measured tone which he had used throughout the adventure—
“No, Miss Grant, I (and he laid an emphasis on the pronoun, so light that a casual observer would not have detected it, and yet which shot a pang through Annie’s heart that caused her colour to come and go, and her limbs to tremble) do not forget so quickly.”
Unable to meet his glance, which she felt was fixed upon her, and scarcely conscious, in her agitation, of what she was saying, Annie faltered out—
“You will give my father an opportunity of thanking you, I hope; he will, I cannot doubt—that is, we shall all be glad to renew our intimacy with so old a friend.”
Lewis paused ere he could trust himself to reply. Her evident emotion, the earnestness of her manner, half timid, half imploring, tended to soothe his wounded spirit and disarm his wrath; but the vision of the morning, in which he had seen her clinging to Lord Bellefield’s arm and smiling upon him, was too fresh in his recollection, and the demon of pride and jealousy still retained full dominion over him.
“You must pardon me,” he said, “I will reserve my visit to General Grant till I can congratulate him on his daughter’s marriage.” Then raising his hat ceremoniously, he bowed to her, and was gone!
No traces of the tumultuous assembly, which had so greatly alarmed Laura and Annie, remained when Lord Bellefield and General Grant crossed the square of St. Mark on their return from the morning’s sight-seeing. As they drew near the Palazzo Grassini, a tall lad in squalid raiment, leaning upon crutches, and with a patch over one eye, approached and begged of them. The General at first refused to listen to him, but becoming wearied by his pertinacity, felt in his pocket for something to give him.