She tried to console him but he pushed her away. Romney had moods when all the world seemed a conspiracy of oppression. At last, she got his hand and then little by little wooed him into a greater patience and more tenderness of farewell.
“For you must not come again before you go. Can’t you see it breaks me?” he said, regarding her with hollow eyes of misery. Then slowly:
“And what is the good of a hasty minute. No, no, this is the last, the last!”
He put his hand over his face as if the last farewell had been uttered.
She declared she would not have it so and soon would be returning to him again, more beautiful, more helpful; and so talked until the inexorable clock hand warned her that Greville would be waiting, and then rose to go, afraid as one who has committed a crime.
The grief on his face reflected itself in her own, for she too had her burden to bear. She burst into sobs.
“Oh, Mr. Romney, I’m frightened. I don’t want to go. Oh, what, what will it bring to me? I’m losing Greville. I’m losing you. Oh, comfort me or I shall die with terror.”
That pulled him into manliness. He steadied and furbished up a pale smile and held himself together until he had calmed her a little. So they parted, she clinging to his hand to the last, and then he stooped and kissed her cheek, and holding the door open saw her go with stooped head and eyes that did not dare to seek him again, while his followed her until the last flutter of her dress was gone round the corner. And then he went back and shut himself in with solitude.
And Greville, too, had his blow a few days before she started. For Sir William wrote to say that on consideration he had allotted a suite of rooms in the Palazzo Sessa to Emma and her mother. They were to be the guests of the Embassy! Greville was frantic with fear and anger. Had the time not been so near, he would have broken up the arrangement altogether sooner than run such a risk. Emma in Sir William’s home—her caressing ways forever about him—not put away in a corner like a crime, but openly acknowledged! Good God, the folly of old men! A madder, more improper arrangement was never suggested. His whole being was unnerved. She would marry some gay young diplomatist, for in the Embassy it would be impossible to keep her away from the society of the many men who were perpetually about, and who could resist such beauty under such auspices? Sir William would be left unguarded to all the matrimonial assaults he dreaded. While, as to Emma, it would turn her head once and for all and make her absolutely insupportable. He genuinely regretted that he had ever entered upon the plan at all; a plan so kindly meant both for Emma and his uncle. He was deeply injured.
He wrote instantly to Hamilton. He warned Emma that she must protest against such a faux pas directly she arrived, but, when all was said and done, she would be there almost as soon as the letter, and was far too sunk in grief to consider anything but the separation from Greville. He could make no impression on her with it. She clung to him and fed her eyes on his face, and heard not his words, but the beloved voice that uttered them. What did Sir William’s plans matter to her?