“Or else—what, Miss Waring? Anything to please you.”
“Or else—give it up altogether,” Constance said.
His face grew very long; he was very fond of his violin. “If you think it is so hopeless as that—if you wish me to give it up altogether——”
“Oh, not I. It amuses me. I like to hear you break down. It would be quite a pity if you were to give up, you take my scolding so delightfully. Don’t give it up as long as you are here, Captain Gaunt. After that, it doesn’t matter what happens—to me.”
“No,” he said, almost with a groan, “it doesn’t matter what happens after that—to me. It’s the Deluge, you know,” said the poor young fellow. “I wish the world would come to an end first”—thus unconsciously echoing the poet. “But, Miss Waring,” he added anxiously, coming a little closer, “I may come back? Though I must go to London, it is not necessary I should stay there. I may come back?”
“Oh, I hope so, Captain Gaunt. What would your mother do, if you did not come back? But I suppose she will be going away for the summer. Everybody leaves Bordighera in the summer, I hear.”
“I had not thought of that,” cried the young soldier. “And you will be going too?’
“I suppose so,” said Constance. “Papa, I hope, is not so lost to every sense of duty as to let me spoil my complexion for ever by staying here.”
“That would be impossible,” he said, with eyes full of admiration.
“You intend that for a compliment, Captain Gaunt; but it is no compliment. It means either that I have no complexion to lose, or that I am one of those thick-skinned people who take no harm—neither of which is complimentary, nor true. I shall have to teach you how to pay compliments as well as how to play the violin.”