"I can afford to wait."
He went on to Switzerland, and from Switzerland strayed into Italy, the St. Gotha route inviting him. He spent a month at Florence, and he saw Dora Wyllard several times during that period, for half an hour at a time. She had taken up her abode for the summer at an hotel—near the Abbey of the Gray Monks, in the forest of Vallombrosa, a truly romantic spot amidst wooded hills. Hither Edward Heathcote made his pilgrimage, deeming himself richly rewarded by half an hour's interview; but there was little in those interviews to stimulate hope. The widow was bowed down by the burden of her sorrow. Her only feeling in relation to Edward Heathcote was that he alone upon earth knew the story of her husband's life, and that he alone could fully sympathise with her in her hopeless misery.
There are widows and widows. While Dora Wyllard was living alone among the pines and chestnuts of the Apennines, seeing no one but monks and occasional tourists, and religiously, avoiding the latter, Lady Valeria Harborough was living up the Thames, in a neighbourhood which has of late become so fashionable that it now ranks rather as an annexe to West-End-London than as the country.
General Harborough's widow had hired one of the prettiest villas at Marlow, a dainty bungalow, built by an artist, who soon tired of his toy, and exchanged the villa for a house-boat, which was less commodious and a good deal more unhealthy, but which possessed the charm of not being rooted in the soil. The house had seemed perfect when Lady Valeria took it, but she had sent down a West End upholsterer with a keen eye for the beautiful to make all possible improvements; and the result was a nest which might have satisfied a modern Cleopatra. But it did not quite satisfy Lady Valeria, who found fault with a good many things, and informed the upholsterer that although his taste was fairly good, and his colouring well chosen, there was an absence of originality in his work.
"I have seen other houses almost as pretty," she said, "and I have seen drawing-rooms just like this, which is worse. I hate to live in rooms like other people's."
The upholsterer murmured something about a royal princess and a royal duchess, both of whom had condescended to express themselves pleased at his decoration of their houses; but Lady Valeria froze him with her look of scorn.
"I hope you don't compare me with royal princesses," she said contemptuously. "They are accustomed to let other people think for them, poor creatures, and they take anything they can get. No one expects originality in a palace. I don't wish to grumble, Mr. Sherrendale, but I am just a little disappointed in your work. It has no cachet."
The upholsterer accepted his rebuke meekly, but with an air of being wounded to the quick; and he took care to debit his wounded feelings against Lady Valeria when he made out his bill.
That villa up the river in the lovely June and July weather seemed to be in the midst of the world's fair. It was gayer than Park Lane—a more concentrated gaiety. Pleasure wore her zone a little looser here than in London. There was just a touch of Bohemianism. People dressed as they liked, said what they liked, did as they liked. There were few stately entertainments, few formal dinners, or smart dances; but every one kept open house; there was a perpetual dropping in, or going and coming, which kept carriages and horses at work all day between houses and stations. The river was like a high-road, and half the population lived in white flannel, and smart tennis frocks, and eccentric hats. It was a world apart—a bright glad summer world in which there was no such thing as thought or care; a world of shining blue water and green meadows, dipping willows, rushy eyots, and hanging woods; a world in which there were hardly any regular meals, only a perpetual picnic, the popping of champagne corks heard in every creek and backwater, while humbler revellers rested on their oars to drink deep of shandygaff; a world musical every evening with glees, and songs, and serenades, to an accompaniment of feathering oars.