“Oh!” said Claude, interrupting hurriedly, “it is that that has all been made up. Constance has been very nice about it,” he continued. “She has been making a study of the Riviera, and collecting all sorts of renseignements; for in most cases, it is necessary for me to winter abroad.”
“That was what she was doing then—her object, I suppose?” said Waring with a grim smile.
“Besides the pleasure of visiting you, sir,” said Claude, with what he felt to be great tact. “She seems to have done a great deal of exploring, and she tells me she has found just the right site for the villa—and all the renseignements,” he added. “To have been on the spot, and studied the aspect, and how the winds blow, is such a great thing; and to be near your place too,” he said politely, by an after-thought.
“Which I hope is to be your place no more, Waring,” said Sir Thomas. “Your own place is very empty, and craving for you all the time.”
“It is too fine a question to say what is my own place,” he said, with that pale indignant smile. “Things are seldom made any clearer by an absence of a dozen years.”
“A great deal clearer—the mists blow away, and the hot fumes. Come, Waring, say you are glad you have come home.”
“I suppose,” said Claude, “you find it really too hot for summer on that coast. What would you say was the end of the season? May? Just when London begins to be possible, and most people have come to town.”
“Is not that one of the renseignements Constance has given you?” Waring asked with a short laugh; but he made no reply to the other questions. And then there was a little of the inevitable politics before the gentlemen went up-stairs. Lady Markham had been threatened with what in France is called an attaque des nerfs, when she reached the shelter of the drawing-room. She was a little hysterical, hardly able to get the better of the sobbing which assailed her. Constance stood apart, and looked on with a little surprise. “You know, mamma,” she said reflectively, “an effort is the only thing. With an effort, you can stop it.”
Frances was differently affected by this emotion. She, who had never learned to be familiar, stole behind her mother’s chair and made her breast a pillow for Lady Markham’s head,—a breast in which the heart was beating now high, now low, with excitement and despondency. She did not say anything; but there is sometimes comfort in a touch. It helped Lady Markham to subdue the unwonted spasm. She held close for a moment the arms which were over her shoulders, and she replied to Constance, “Yes, that is true. I am ashamed of myself. I ought to know better—at my age.”
“It has gone off on the whole very well,” Constance said. And then she retired to a sofa and took up a book.