“Why should there be?” cried Bill Snodgrass, in generous excitement. “Oh, listen to me! Don’t do in a hurry what you would repent all your life. She—might suffer for a day, but you for ever. Oh don’t, for the sake of false honour, bind yourself so! Don’t go on with it! this marriage——”
“Silence!” said the Italian, with a hot flush on his face. “Silence, silence!” Then his tone changed to something of the same grieved and tender sound which it took when he addressed Sophy. “Friend,” he said, with pathetic gentleness, “why rob me of your sympathy? I will know how you think if you say nothing; but to advise will make an end of all. See! what you are talking of will soon be to me the foundation of my life. That is sacred: that no man must discuss with me. No more, not a word, or I shall lose you—too.”
You—too! Who was the other, then, whom he had lost? The curate made an effort to speak again, but was silenced still more summarily; and thus they walked slowly in silence to Pandolfini’s house, where they parted with only a mutual grasp of the hand. Young Snodgrass’s mind was distracted with generosity, pity, and distress. He walked about in front of the great dark doorway where his friend had disappeared, with a mind torn in pieces with diverse thoughts. Should he follow him, and make one last attempt?—but he felt that to be indeed useless. Then a thought came into his head that brought a sudden gush of warmth to the chill of his anxiety. He would go to Diana. If any one could help, surely she would do so—she who was always ready to help; or at least she would tell him if anything could be done. He went back to the Palazzo dei Sogni without taking time to think, and, all hot and hasty, rushed into her presence before he allowed himself to consider what he was doing. Diana was alone. She was seated by her writing-table, on which lay a number of papers; but she had pushed her chair slightly away, and had a book in her hand, which probably, at the sound of her visitor’s entering, she had dropped upon her knee. Her solitary figure in this attitude, the papers neglected, the book dropped, all seemed to imply to Snodgrass a loneliness which never before had associated itself in his mind with Diana. For the first time in his life he felt, and wondered at himself for daring to feel, a kind of pity for the princess of his thoughts. She, too, was lonely, solitary, no one near her to make the world brighter; for which purpose poor Bill Snodgrass, who knew that he was capable of nothing but boring her, thought he would willingly have given his life.
She rose up with a friendly, sweet salutation when she saw who it was. She was glad to see him—was it possible? For once in his life he had brightened her by the sight of his heavy reverential face.
“I am very glad you have come,” she said, in answer to his stammered salutation, “for I was feeling lonely, which is not usual with me. Everybody whom I know gone—and our little friends upstairs are very busy, of course,” she added, with a smile.
The curate had not time to think, as he probably would have done otherwise, that the idea of these little friends neglecting Diana was incredible. His mind was too full of his mission, which filled his homely countenance with purpose and eagerness. Diana saw this almost before she had completed what she was saying. She added hastily, in a different tone, “Something has happened—you have come to tell me of something? Is it news from home?”
“No,” he said: “Miss Trelawny, perhaps it is something quite foolish or more; but you understand—and you will pardon me if I am wrong. Pandolfini—he is in a condition I cannot understand.”
“Is he ill?” He thought she grew paler, and clasped her hands together as if something moved her.
“No, not that I know of: except that he is haggard and worn—a shadow of himself. It is about this—marriage.”
Diana had made a step towards him with warm and anxious interest at Pandolfini’s name. She now drew back again, a cloud falling over her. She did not make any reply, but only shook her head, and her countenance grew very grave, the smile, which was always lurking somewhere, ready to be called forth, fading altogether from her face.