Watching, he saw a tear splash on the brass button of his coat, but said nothing. He let her unpack her heart.
“I often fear it won’t last forever.” Her voice was quivering now. “For it’s three years, and that’s a long time for a man’s heart though but a day to a woman’s. He said, when we began, that he never knew a woman clever enough to keep a man that was tired of her. Mr. Romney, is he tired of me?”
Down went the coat on her knee, and two swimming eyes invited his judgment as that of heaven, two trembling hands extended to receive sentence.
“Child, how can I tell?” the Mentor answered tenderly. “To me it seems that your infinite variety mocks the very word tire, but indeed I know not these men of fashion who love themselves so well that there’s but little room for a woman’s face in their heart. But you should not vex him without cause. Greville loves his ease. Even my bat’s eyes can see that far. But that he can throw such a jewel away I’ll never credit till I see it.”
She shook her head disconsolate.
“I’m the most ungrateful girl on earth. I know it. Sure he sent me to the sea and I ill, when he was off to his uncle’s new estates at Milford. And he let me have little Emma with me, and not a grumble out of him over my bills, which was wonderful indeed, though heaven knows I kept them as low as low! And yet in spite of it, I can’t always hold my miserable tongue, though I love him with all my heart and soul and shall forever.”
“And you that I thought was modelling yourself on Serena in the poem!” said Romney, with the ghost of a smile. “I don’t think you’ll ever rival that lady, somehow, and for my part I don’t wholly wish you should. But Greville likes ease, and to see his pupil do him honour. Teaching and lecturing’s his master passion and every time you kick over the traces you disparage his own method to him. That’s more than half the trouble.”
“I know, I know! And, sure, to please God and Greville is my only aim. Oh, Mr. Romney, if we could see a little ahead, if we could know what’s coming! He’ll turn his poor Emma off one day, and then—”
“Then she’ll know there’s a man smudges paint on canvas would rather starve than she should want! But I think better of Greville’s discrimination. You sit down here presently and write him a pretty letter, and I’ll send it to the big house he’s at, and it will bring him back to-morrow. But don’t anger him again. What is it but to stick a knife in your own breast?”
She told him he was right, and resumed her stitching, and he watched her with his heart in his eyes—his divine lady, his child, his muse; all and one, and more that he could never put in words. If Laura possesses Petrarch, and Dante, Beatrice, to the end of time, so most surely does Emma possess the man who will not let her die, who with strong magic caught and fixed ghost after ghost of her beauty upon canvas to make the world eternally her lover.