'Did her hand tremble when she referred to the past?' thought Chute, viciously. 'Was Desmond hanging over her chair when she penned this? Why does she and not Ida write to me? Is this angling or coquetry? But Clare needs not to angle with me, and she never was a coquette.'
The truth was that poor Clare had written, but with the greatest reluctance, by desire of Ida, who, for secret and kind reasons of her own, wished her sister to address him; and the sight of her handwriting did not fail to produce much of the effect which the gentle Ida intended; for Chute, while resolving to pay a visit, meant it to be a farewell one; and if he saw Clare, to suppress all emotion, to seem 'as cool as a cucumber.'
And yet, but for his promise given, and in accordance with Jack Beverley's dying request, he would, on visiting London, no more have gone near the Collingwood family than have faced a volcano in full flame; perhaps he would not have come to London at all till the season was over; and now he was preparing to pay a second visit, but as he meant, a farewell one, to Ida, after dining—actually dining, per express invitation—with the father, who, in a spirit of selfish policy, had broken his engagement with Clare.
It was an absurdly anomalous situation, and altogether strange.
With all Trevor Chute's regard for Jerry Vane, many of his deepest sympathies were with his brave comrade, Beverley, whose last moments he had soothed, and to whose last faint mutterings he had listened when life ebbed in that hot and distant bungalow—mutterings of his past years and absent love—of the beechen woods of his English home.
Chute had a brotherly love for Ida, and had she not asked him to love her as a sister?
He could remember a dainty, delicate little girl, with a rose-leaf complexion, a face of smiles and dimples, all gay with white lace and blue ribbon, and the floating masses of her auburn hair bound by a simple fillet of gold.
And the memory of these past times, with all their dear and deep associations, came strongly back to Trevor's heart when, within a short time of the receipt of Clare's note, he sat with Ida's thin white hand in his, gazing into the depths of her tender brown eyes, on her pale and delicate cheek, and confessing to himself how lovely she was, and how charming as a friend.
She was every way more calm and composed than when he visited her before, and she seemed much inclined to talk of their first intercourse and relations in the years that were gone; and more than once she stirred the depths of Trevor's honest heart by a few words, dropped as if casually, yet so delicately, from which he was led to infer that he had frequently formed the topic of conversation between her and Clare, and that he was not without an interest in the breast of the latter still.
After a pause he sighed, but with some little bitterness, as he thought of the formidable rival who had Sir Carnaby's 'warmest wishes,' and said: