It was, in truth, a look of entreaty from woman to woman, signifying need of womanly help. Renée would have made a confidante of her, if she had not known her to be Nevil’s, and devoted to him. “I would speak to you, but that I feel you would betray me,” her eyes had said. The strong sincerity dwelling amid multiform complexities might have made itself comprehensible to the English lady for a moment or so, had Renée spoken words to her ears; but belief in it would hardly have survived the girl’s next convolutions. “She is intensely French,” Rosamund said to Nevil—a volume of insular criticism in a sentence.
“You do not know her, ma’am,” said Nevil. “You think her older than she is, and that is the error I fell into. She is a child.”
“A serpent in the egg is none the less a serpent, Nevil. Forgive me; but when she tells you the case is hopeless!”
“No case is hopeless till a man consents to think it is; and I shall stay.”
“But then again, Nevil, you have not consulted your uncle.”
“Let him see her! let him only see her!”
Rosamund Culling reserved her opinion compassionately. His uncle would soon be calling to have him home: society panted for him to make much of him and here he was, cursed by one of his notions of duty, in attendance on a captious “young French beauty, who was the less to be excused for not dismissing him peremptorily, if she cared for him at all. His career, which promised to be so brilliant, was spoiling at the outset. Rosamund thought of Renée almost with detestation, as a species of sorceress that had dug a trench in her hero’s road, and unhorsed and fast fettered him.
The marquis was expected immediately. Renée sent up a little note to Mrs. Calling’s chamber early in the morning, and it was with an air of one-day-more-to-ourselves, that, meeting her, she entreated the English lady to join the expedition mentioned in her note. Roland had hired a big Chioggian fishing-boat to sail into the gulf at night, and return at dawn, and have sight of Venice rising from the sea. Her father had declined; but M. Nevil wished to be one of the party, and in that case.... Renée threw herself beseechingly into the mute interrogation, keeping both of Rosamund’s hands. They could slip away only by deciding to, and this rare Englishwoman had no taste for the petty overt hostilities. “If I can be of use to you,” she said.
“If you can bear sea-pitching and tossing for the sake of the loveliest sight in the whole world,” said Renée.
“I know it well,” Rosamund replied.