CHAPTER XX
The next morning dawned cloudlessly, and a burning sun blazed intense summer heat through all the hours of the longest and loveliest day. Such persistent warmth brought its own languor and oppression, and though all the doors and windows of the Château Fragonard were left open, Madame Dimitrius found herself quite overwhelmed by the almost airless stillness, notwithstanding a certain under-wave of freshness which always flowed from the mountains like a breathing of the snow.
“How is Diana?” she asked of her son, as, clad in a suit of cool white linen, he sauntered in from the garden to luncheon.
“I believe she is very well,” he answered, composedly. “She has not complained.”
“I hope she has nothing to complain of,” said the old lady, nervously. “You promised me, Féodor, that you would not let her suffer.”
“I promised you that if she was unhappy or in pain, I would do my best to spare her as much as possible,” he replied. “But, up to the present, she is neither unhappy nor in pain.”
“You are sure?”
“Sure!”
Vasho, who was in attendance, stared at him in something of questioning terror, and his mother watched him with a mute fondness of appeal in her eyes which, however, he did not or would not see. She could not but feel a certain pride in him as she looked at his fine, intellectual face, rendered just now finer and more attractive by the tension of his inward thought. Presently he met her searching, loving gaze with a smile.
“Do you not think, Mother mine,” he said, “that I merit some of the compassion you extend so lavishly to Miss May, who is, after all, a stranger in our house? Can you not imagine it possible that I, too, may suffer? Permit yourself to remember that it is now twenty-five years since I started on this quest, and that during that time I have not rested day or night without having my brain at work, puzzling out my problem. Now that I have done all which seems to me humanly possible, have you no thought of me and my utter despair if I fail?”