Does there seem an unpardonable obliquity in the mind that admits such a consideration? The recorder of the manners and morals of another age does not pretend to compare them with this, nor the materialism of the eighteenth century with the pure idealism and lofty standards of conduct in such matters of the twentieth. Yet Greville had his standard of conscience also, such as it was. It stood aside from the pleasures a gentleman might choose to indulge himself in, but in revenge insisted on certain points to be observed in the way they were transacted. Sir Harry Fetherstonehaugh’s behaviour to Emma was odious in Greville’s eyes. Brutality, coarseness, open infidelity even to a mistress, were things his code could not for a moment admit. Infidelity to a wife—whose cause the world would countenance—was a far lesser matter, though one he would reasonably hope to avoid, provided she pleased him. He had also observed a kindly and correct demeanour toward the little Emma, who was certainly no rightful concern of his. The baby school-bills were regularly settled, nor had he any thought of retreating from that obligation. And lastly, nothing would induce him to abandon Emma without a proper provision for her needs.
If materialism disguised in the wig and spectacles of the ancient maiden Prudence pointed out how much simpler it would be should another, on whose kindness he could rely, undertake her maintenance, was the thought so very unnatural as to warrant any censor arising and calling him the reversed of blessed?
Be that as it may it must be owned that it came as a solvent of all his difficulties, could Emma be brought to view the matter sensibly. The utmost, the most delicate caution, would however be necessary before that could become possible.
Having reached that point—and the two others the degree of confidence when Emma rested her hand timidly on the Ambassador’s knee, drinking in his every word—Greville with his usual method docketed his illumination, parcelled up its brilliance, and placed it in a mental pigeon-hole for easy reference, drew an agreeable smile over his anxieties and asked Sir William if he would like to see the attitudes which Emma had invented one day in Romney’s studio to that master’s entrancement. She ran gaily upstairs to bring her little apparatus.
“She is perfectly fascinating!” Sir William said, with enthusiasm rare in such a finished man of the world. “A most adorable companion. Intelligent, receptive, a perfect listener—”
“Didn’t I tell you?” says Greville with his slow smile. “But don’t spoil her, my dear Hamilton, I entreat. She is the most unspoilt spontaneous creature in the world at present, and I have never given her an indigestion of sugar-plums. Make her self-conscious and the dew is off the rose.”
“Very true, but who can look at her and be wise? With all my soul I pity you, if you must let her go. And for Miss Middleton—a cold, correctly-featured girl with no fire, no sparkle!”
“My poverty and not my will consents,” quoted Greville with a shrug, as Emma came in dressed in a white robe simply caught at the waist and falling in the long straight folds dear to the heart of that lover of the classical, Sir William. The sleeves were short, disclosing a pair of rounded arms; on one was slung a wreath of artificial roses, in one hand a tambourine.
“The perfect Greek! Stand, stand there, just at the door, for a moment!” cried the enraptured connoisseur. “Good God, what an attitude!”
She froze herself instantly into immobility, framed in the doorway, the long folds falling solemnly about her, the face calm as death, a breathing statue. And, as he watched, a faintly dawning smile touched the corners of her perfect lips and spread upwards like light until it reached her eyes, and then, with a sweet cry, she sprang forward, and dropping the roses at her feet flung the arm upward with the tambourine until it rang again and so stood all life and radiance caught on the wave of a dance, each light limb expressing its perfect movement though struck into marble for the instant—a Pompeian dancer, the flower of love’s insolence, the living blossom of a dead civilization.