“That is rather an alarming preface, but very just too. If you don’t like to acknowledge it to yourself, you will like still less to acknowledge it to me?”
“I don’t quite see that: perhaps I am harder upon myself than you would be. No; but I prefer to think of it a little more before I tell you. I have a kind of feeling now that it is because—but you will think that a shabby sort of pride—it is because I am too proud to own myself beaten, which I should do if I were to go back.”
“It is a very natural sort of pride,” he said.
“But it is not all that. I must go a little deeper still. Not to-night. I have done as much thinking as I am quite able for to-night.”
And thus the question was left for another day.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Next morning, Constance, seated as usual in the loggia, which was now, as the weather grew hot, veiled with an awning, heard—her ears being very quick, and on the alert for every sound—a tinkle of the bell, a sound of admittance, the step of Domenico leading some visitor to the place in which she sat. Was it he, coming yet again to implore her pardon, an extension of privileges, a hope for the future? She made out instantaneously, however, that the footstep which followed Domenico was not that of young Gaunt. It was softer, less decided—an indefinite female step. She sat up in her chair and listened, letting her book fall, and next moment saw Mrs Gaunt, old-fashioned, unassured, with a troubled look upon her face, in her shawl and big hat, come out almost timidly upon the loggia. Constance sprang to her feet—then in a moment collapsed and shrank away into herself. Before the young lover she was a queen, and to her father she preserved her dignity very well; but when his mother appeared, the girl had no longer any power to hold up her head. Mrs Gaunt was old, very badly dressed, not very clever or wise; but Constance felt those mild, somewhat dull eyes penetrating to the depths of her own guilty heart.
“How do you do, Miss Waring?” said Mrs Gaunt, stiffly. (She had called her “my dear” yesterday, and had been so anxious to please her, doing everything she could to ingratiate herself.) “I hope I do not disturb you so early; but my son, Captain Gaunt, is going away——”
“Oh yes—I heard. I am very sorry,” the guilty Constance murmured, hanging her head.
“I do not know that there is any cause to be sorry; we were going anyhow in a few days. And in London my son will find many friends.”