She looked down and muttered the one word, “Greville.”
“Yes, you are right. That brings us back to where we started. We have written to Greville. I shall go away and leave you to reflection which will deeply affect us both. There is no more to be said at present.”
“Oh, don’t go!” It came like an involuntary cry. “Won’t you miss me? Won’t you miss accompanying my songs with your viola; and how can I sing if you are gone? And the book”—she laid her hand on the sheets—“and the garden? If you go I will go nowhere until you come back. It’s all nothing to me unless you’re here.”
He wanted to improve on that admission but held himself strongly back.
“My dear Emma, I have called you my friend. I wish this matter settled with reason and good sense, and to that end we must separate a while that we may both reflect. I have my thinking to do as well as you yours. This pleasant delightful life has drifted us into a situation which may hold its difficulties for me as well as for you if I am not careful. It will really be best we should meet no more until you have heard from Greville. Let us postpone any discussion until then.”
It terrified her, but what could she say? Her mind was a tossing sea. She wished to keep them both—the one as a lover, the other as an indulgent friend—and it looked most alarmingly as if neither could be trained into the position she wished him to fill.
“May I write to you?” she faltered.
“Certainly. And pray write fully to Greville. Your mind and his will be the easier for it. The position cannot be made too clear. Now, we will not meet except in public until I return.”
He got himself out of the room somehow, out of range of those imploring eyes. And yet what they implored she knew no more than he. And though he took her to Sorrento where she was the hostess at an informal entertainment, the centre of all thoughts and admiration, she could not catch a single responsive look from his eyes. His private band was there and accompanied her in her latest, most brilliant song. The applause was deafening, but he was talking to my Lady Diana Beauclerck before it ceased and she could not see a single motion of his hands to swell the uproar. She sang again some of the Piedigrotta songs—redolent of the country and the people—this time in costume and with her tambourine, and yet could extract nothing but the placid smile of general benevolence with which he regarded all the company. Her fears grew steadily, and by the time he departed before she was up, she was on tenter-hooks.
She went and shut herself that evening into the room of the mirrors and did the serious thinking he recommended, with a little note of farewell from him in her hand. He was hurt and she had hurt him. How far had she hurt herself in doing it? Could it be possible that she had been foolishly, madly mistaken in her course throughout; that if she had written to Greville rather on her triumphs than her sorrows, he might have valued her more highly? Men did not like perpetual moaning and whining, and Greville of all men would not bear it. Could that be the reason why he had not troubled to answer her letters? If so—oh, if she could but recall the last two she had written! And as to Sir William—had she not deafened and besieged him with her Greville lamentations and was not that madness also? What could have possessed her to weary them both with such folly? Surely the merest beginner should have known better; and she—the beauty, the genius whom all her world applauded, who could not only delight but fascinate every man who looked into her eyes—she to behave like a love-sick country girl!