“But will that be right?” pleaded Annie, looking up wistfully into the face of him who would be from thenceforth her oracle.
It is a fearful responsibility when, through the affections, we gain such a hold over a living soul that the judgment lies dormant, and the thing which seems good in our eyes appears so in theirs also; such influence is indeed a mighty talent committed to our charge, and most careful should we be lest we abuse the trust reposed in us. Lewis felt this strongly, and paused to reconsider his decision. His chief reason for wishing that General Grant might not be immediately informed of his declaration was the difficult position in which it would place that gallant officer in regard to Lord Bellefield’s relations. How could he, for instance, expect Lord Ashford to believe that his brother-in-law had used all possible exertion to secure the murderer of his son when Annie Grant, that son’s destined bride, was affianced to a man who, but for the catastrophe which had taken place, would have met Lord Bellefield in a duel? the altercation and subsequent challenge being so completely a matter of notoriety in Venice that it was certain that some account of them, probably an exaggerated and distorted one, would find its way to England. But this was a reason which he could not give Annie, as he correctly imagined that the affair at the Casino had been kept from her knowledge. Thus the more he reflected the more certain he became that his original determination was a right one. Accordingly he replied—
“Trust me, dear one; concealment is as foreign to my nature as to your own. My faults (and I have only too many) do not lie in that direction; but, to the best of my judgment, I believe that in wishing your father should, for the present, remain ignorant of our engagement, I am consulting your interest and his quite as much as my own. Believe me, love, I would sacrifice anything, even the cherished hope of one day calling you my own, rather than influence you to do aught for which your conscience could afterwards upbraid you.”
And Annie did believe him, with the strong, unhesitating faith of perfect love. Had he advanced the most incredible assertion—declared, for instance, that he had discovered perpetual motion, squared the circle, and set the Thames on fire, Annie would equally and implicitly have believed him. Had he deceived her, her only refuge from a universal scepticism would have been to die. Then came the “sweet sorrow” of a lovers’ parting—sweet in the many evidences of affection which the occasion calls forth, and sorrowful by reason of the anxious thoughts to which quitting those we love, even under the happiest auspices, necessarily gives rise. Annie’s bright eyes were dim with tears, and Lewis’s mouth, no longer sternly compressed, trembled with the emotion he in vain attempted to conceal, as, with a murmured “God bless and protect you, my own darling!” he tore himself away.
In the meanwhile, scarcely had Richard Frere quitted the Grassini Palace than he encountered General Grant, fretting and fuming under the weight of a burden of minor miseries, and full of complaints of the abominable misdemeanours of the Venetian officials, amongst which, by no means the lightest, was the culpable stupidity which prevented them from speaking or understanding English, together with the obstinate prejudice with which they refused to acknowledge that by adding the letter O to the termination of words in that language they immediately became Italian—
“I said ‘requiro uno passporto’ to them, sir, half-a-dozen times over, and nobody shall ever make me believe they did not know what that meant!” was his indignant complaint.
Of course Frere’s ready sympathy entailed on him a request that if he could spare the time to go back to the office with him, the General would esteem it such a great favour, and of course, though his conscience reproached him for being away from “poor, solitary. Lewis” for so many hours, he did what was required of him; and of course, having said A,—B, C, and D followed as a matter of necessity, until, before he had gone through the alphabet of the General’s commissions, several hours had elapsed, and Lewis, having found his way back to his lodgings, was reclining in an easy-chair enjoying a feast of happy memories and bright anticipations, when Frere, hot, tired, and dissatisfied with his morning’s work, flung down his cotton umbrella, and throwing himself, very much unbuttoned, in a kind of dishevelled heap upon the nearest chair, began—
“Well, confound this climate, say I, where a man can’t get through a morning’s business without coming home more like a piece of hot boiled beef than a temperate Christian—here’s a state of dissolution for a free-born Briton to be in. I tell you what it is, young man, if you keep me here much longer I shall become a mere walking skeleton—flesh and blood literally can’t stand it, and I shall have to go home and be married in my bones.”
“By which ceremony I suppose you hope to become possessed of an additional rib to make up for your loss of substance,” suggested Lewis, smiling at the odd, quaint way in which his friend described his troubles.
“Yes, it’s all very well for you to sit there and laugh at a fellow,” returned Frere grumpily, “but if you had been parading about this oven of a place for two hours, tied like a kettle to Governor Grant’s tail, as I have been, you would find it no such laughing matter, I can tell you. He is obstinate and wrong-headed as an elderly mule too, making a fuss about trifles that do not signify a bit one way or the other. Why cannot he take life coolly and quietly as—as——?”