“What day did you say, Fan, the funeral was to be?” he asked, with the air of a man who has escaped from an unwelcome intrusion to the real subject of his thoughts.
Sir Thomas found her alone, flushed and miserable, drying her tears with a feverish little angry hand. She was very much alone during these days, when Lady Markham was so often with Nelly Winterbourn. Sir Thomas was pleased to find her, having also an object of his own. He soothed her, when he saw that she had been crying. “Never mind me,” he said; “but you must not let other people see that you are feeling it so much: for you cannot be supposed to take any particular interest in Winterbourn: and people will immediately suppose that you and your mother are troubled about the changes that must take place in the house.”
“I was not thinking at all of Mrs Winterbourn,” cried Frances, with indignation.
“No, my dear; I knew you could not be. Don’t let any one but me see you crying. Lady Markham will feel the marriage dreadfully, I know. But now is our time for our grand coup.”
“What grand coup?” the girl said, with an astonished look.
“Have you forgotten what I said to you at the Priory? One of the chief objects of my life is to bring Waring back. It is intolerable to think that a man of his abilities should be banished for ever, and lost not only to his country but his kind. Even if he were working for the good of the race out there—— But he is doing nothing but antiquities, so far as I can hear, and there are plenty of antiquarians good for nothing else. Frances, we must have him home.”
“Home!” she said. Her heart went back with a bound to the rooms in the Palazzo with all the green persiani shut, and everything dark and cool: it was getting warm in London, but there were no such precautions taken. And the loggia at night, with the palm-trees waving majestically their long drooping fans, and the soft sound of the sea coming over the houses of the Marina—ah, and the happy want of thought, the pleasant vacancy, in which nothing ever happened! She drew a long breath. “I ought not to say so, perhaps; but when you say home——”
“You think of the place where you were brought up? That is quite natural. But it would not be the same to him. He was not brought up there; he can have nothing to interest him there. Depend upon it, he must very often wish that he could pocket his pride and come back. We must try to get him back, Frances. Don’t you think, my dear, that we could manage it, you and I?”
Frances shook her head, and said she did not know. “But I should be very glad—oh, very glad: if I am to stay here,” she said.
“Of course you would be glad; and of course you are to stay here. You could not leave your poor mother by herself. And now that Markham—now that probably everything will be changed for Markham—— If Markham were out of the way, it would be so much easier; for, you know, he always was the stumbling-block. She would not let Waring manage him, and she could not manage him herself.”