“I thought your face showed traces of suffering.”
This was one of many such conversations, full of keen questioning on her part, with an assumed lightness of manner which thinly veiled the irritability of her mind. She had changed for the worse since they left Nice; she had grown more sensitive, more suspicious, more irritable. She was in a condition of health in which many women are despondent or irritable—in which with some women life seems one long disgust, and all things are irksome, even the things that have been pleasantest and most valued before—even the aspect of a lovely landscape, the phrases of a familiar melody, the perfume of a once favourite flower. He tried to cheer her by talking of their future, the time to come when there would be a new bond between them, a new interest in their lives; but she saw all things in a gloomy atmosphere.
“Who knows?” she said. “I may die, perhaps; or you may love your child better than you have ever loved me, and then I should hate it.”
“Viva, you cannot doubt that my love for our child will strengthen my love for you.”
“Will it?” she asked incredulously. “God knows it needs strengthening.”
This was hard upon a man whose tenderness and indulgence had been boundless, who had done all that chivalry and a sense of duty can do to atone for the lack of love. He had tried his uttermost to conceal the one bitter truth that love was wanting: but those keen eyes of hers had seen the gap between them, that sensitive ear had discovered the rift in the lute.
One afternoon they climbed the hill to the breezy common on which the lighthouse stands, and dawdled about in the sunshine, gathering the pale gray rosemary bloom and the perfumed thyme which grow among those hollows and hillocks in such wild luxuriance. They were sauntering near the carriage-road, talking very little—she feeble and tired, although it was her own fancy to have walked so far—when they saw a carriage driving towards them—a large landau, with the usual bony horses and shabby jingling harness, and the usual sunburnt good-tempered driver.
Two girls in white gowns and Leghorn hats were in the carriage, with an elderly woman in black. Their laps were full of wild flowers, and branches of wild cherry and pear blossom filled the leather hood at the back of the carriage. They were talking and laughing gaily, all animation and high spirits, as they drew near; and at sight of George Ransome one of them waved her hand in greeting, and called to the driver to stop. They were two handsome Irish girls who had made a sensation at the Battle of Flowers six weeks before. They were spoken of by some people as the belles of Nice. Mr. Ransome had pelted them with Parma violets and yellow rosebuds on the Promenade des Anglais, as they drove up and down in a victoria embowered in white stocks and narcissi. He had waltzed with them at the Cercle de la Méditerranée and the Palais Montano; had admired them frankly and openly, not afraid to own even to a jealous wife that he thought them beautiful.
Delia Darcy, the elder and handsomer of the two, leaned over the carriage-door to shake hands with him, while Vivien stood aloof, on a grassy knoll above the road, looking daggers. What right had they to stop their carriage and waylay her husband?
“Who would have thought of finding you in this out-of-the-way spot?” exclaimed Miss Darcy; “we fancied you had left the Riviera. Are you stopping at Monte Carlo?”