But that was just what every one seemed determined not to do. Sigismund devoted himself exclusively to the society of his young hostess. William Jeffson let the weeds grow high amongst the potatoes while he planted standard rose-bushes, and nailed up graceful creepers, and dug, and improved, and transplanted in that portion of the garden which made a faint pretence to prettiness. Was it that he wished to occupy Mrs. Gilbert's mind, and to force her to some slight exertion? He did not prune a shrub, or trim a scrap of box, without consulting the Doctor's Wife upon the subject; and Isabel was called out into the garden half-a-dozen times in an hour.
And then during his visit Sigismund insisted upon taking Mrs. Gilbert to Warncliffe to dine with his mother and sisters. Mr. Smith's family made quite a festival for the occasion: there was a goose for dinner,—a vulgar and savoury bird; and a big damson pie, and apples and pears in green leaf-shaped dishes for dessert; and of course Isabel's thoughts wandered away from that homely mahogany, with its crimson worsted d'oyleys and dark-blue finger-glasses, to the oval table at Mordred and all its artistic splendour of glass and fruit and flowers.
The Smith family thought Mrs. Gilbert very quiet and insipid; but luckily Sigismund had a great deal to say about his own achievements, past, present, and future; so Isabel was free to sit in the twilight listening dreamily to the slow footsteps in the old-fashioned street outside—the postman's knock growing fainter and fainter in the distance—and the cawing of the rooks in a grove of elms on the outskirts of the town.
Mr. Smith senior spent the evening in the bosom of his family, and was put through rather a sharp examination upon abstruse questions in chancery and criminal practice by his aspiring son, who was always getting into morasses of legal difficulty, from which he required to be extricated by professional assistance.
The evening seemed a very long one to poor Isabel; but it was over at last, and Sigismund conducted her back to Graybridge in a jolting omnibus; and during that slow homeward drive she was free to sit in a corner and think of him.
Mr. Smith left his friends on the following day; and before going, he walked with Isabel in the garden, and talked to her a little of her life.
"I dare say it is a little dull at Graybridge," he said, as if in answer to some remark of Isabel's, and yet she had said nothing. "I dare say you do find it a little dull, though George is one of the best fellows that ever lived, and devoted to you; yes, Izzie, devoted to you, in his quiet way. He isn't one of your demonstrative fellows, you know; can't go into grand romantic raptures, or anything of that kind. But we were boys together, Izzie, and I know him thoroughly: and I know that he loves you dearly, and would break his honest heart if anything happened to you; or he was—anyhow to take it into his head that you didn't love him. But still, I dare say, you do find life rather slow work down here; and I can't help thinking that if you were to occupy yourself a little more than you do, you'd be happier. Suppose, now," cried Mr. Smith, palpably swelling with the importance of his idea,—"suppose you were to WRITE A NOVEL! THERE! You don't know how happy it would make you. Look at me. I always used to be sighing and lamenting, and wishing for this, that, or the other: wishing I had ten thousand a year, or a Grecian nose, or some worldly advantage of that sort; but since I've taken to writing novels, I don't think I've a desire unsatisfied. There's nothing I haven't done—on paper. The beautiful women I've loved and married; the fortunes I've come into, always unexpectedly, and when I was at the very lowest ebb, with a tendency to throw myself into the Serpentine in the moonlight; the awful vengeance I've wreaked upon my enemies; the murders I've committed would make the life of a Napoleon Buonaparte seem tame and trivial by comparison. I suppose it isn't I that steal up the creaking stair, with a long knife tightly grasped and gleaming blue in the moonbeams that creep through a chink in the shutter; but I'm sure I enjoy myself as much as if it was. And if I were a young lady," continued Mr. Smith, speaking with some slight hesitation, and glancing furtively at Isabel's face,—"if I were a young lady, and had a kind of romantic fancy for a person I ought not to care about, I'll tell you what I'd do with him,—I'd put him into a novel, Izzie, and work him out in three volumes; and if I wasn't heartily sick of him by the time I got to the last chapter, nothing on earth would cure me."
This was the advice which Sigismund gave to Isabel at parting. She understood his meaning, and resented his interference. She was beginning to feel that people guessed her wickedness, and tried to cure her of her madness. Yes; she was very wicked—very mad. She acknowledged her sin, but she could not put it away from her. And now that he was gone, now that he was far away, never to come back, never to look upon her face again, surely there could be no harm in thinking of him. She did think of him, daily and hourly; no longer with any reservation, no longer with any attempt at self-deception. Eugene Aram and Ernest Maltravers, the Giaour and the Corsair, were alike forgotten. The real hero of her life had come, and she bowed down before his image, and paid him perpetual worship. What did it matter? He was gone! He was as far away from her life now as those fascinating figments of the poetic brain, Messrs. Aram and Maltravers. He was a dream, like all the other dreams of her life; only he could never melt away or change as they had done.