There is nothing perfect in this world. How different, how very different, she had expected it all to be! She had expected perhaps that Harry himself would be a little gratified, that he would be touched by the faith in him of his little sister and her determination to find him. Lydia had herself forgotten that this determination had fallen much into the background in her recent wanderings. She thought her mind had always been full of it, and that this was the recompense of her devotion. She was hurt and wounded. Though she was Harry’s sister, and though she had brought him a fortune in her hand, she was still a stranger in Harry’s house, and his wife defied her. She could have cried this time in sheer mortification and injured feeling. “I will let them know that you are here,” she said with as much stateliness as she could muster. “I have done all that I suppose is in my power. I will not intrude upon anyone.” What a dreadful thing it is to be a woman and have that weakness of crying when you are hurt! Liddy kept her tears in her eyes only by main force, and could not altogether succeed in subduing the tremor in her voice.
At this moment, however, the door opened, and the servant appeared, introducing Lionel, who stared when he saw the party thus assembled. Lionel was not in the best of tempers. He had been making inquiries as best he could, and he had found all Lydia’s guesses confirmed. But he had gone back to find that she had stolen a march upon him, and he was exceedingly cross, so cross that he was sometimes very angry with, and at other times very sorry for, himself. When he had made his bow to Rita, and stared with a gloomy countenance at her husband, he turned to Lydia with suppressed passion. “My mother has sent me for you,” he said. “She wishes you to remember that everything must be ready early to be sent down to the steamboat. Time and tide will wait for no man, you know.” This was said with a little smile, as if he were beginning to perceive, and wanted at least to hide from the others, the vexation in his tone.
This made a diversion, and as the whole story had to be told him, the members of this strange family group were drawn nearer to each other in spite of themselves. Under cover of the little commotion of talk which got up, all of them sometimes speaking together, Rita, who began with her quick intelligence to realize the position, and to see her own ungraciousness, took the opportunity to draw a little nearer to Lydia. She kissed her when she went away. “I—I hope you will forgive me if I was bewildered,” she said: and Lydia forgave. But she was not the less stately when she left the party, feeling, with a little bitterness, that without her they would talk the matter over more at their ease. Lionel was stately, too. He made them his congratulations with the utmost gravity, as if pleasure were out of the question, and he took the earliest opportunity to remind Lydia a second time that his mother was waiting, and that the things must be sent to the boat. They went out of the house together in a sort of armed pacification, a truce hastily patched up, stalking side by side, not looking at each other. Going out into the street was a sort of solemnity to them, like steering out into the sea on a voyage in which they did not know what might happen. Anything might happen in it. They might quarrel for ever and ever, they might part not to see each other again. They might do anything—except walk quietly from the British Consulate to the Leone, where Lady Brotherton was waiting, fretting over Miss Joscelyn’s box, which was not locked, and of which no one could find the key.
CHAPTER XIV.
IN THE STREET.
OUT in the street, out upon the world, out upon a perfectly lonely sea, where they saw nobody and thought of nobody, but those two worlds of themselves, he and she, moving alone together, with a little space of clear daylight between them, the two parallel lines which can never come together so long as measurements last—For a time they moved on with no communication at all, each feeling very solitary, and unspeakably dignified and superior to all trivial thoughts and words. What could they have to say? What does he care? Lydia said to herself; what does anyone care but me? She had done her work, but she had not got much satisfaction out of it. It had estranged her friends from her, and everybody. Her mother would be pleased, that was always a little consolation to think of. Dear mother! and what if she were disappointed too? You never can tell how little satisfaction there is in a new thing till it has happened, she said to herself. In her preoccupation she stumbled over a crossing, over the rough pavement, and then her companion spoke.
“Take care; these little streets are so many traps. Will you take my arm till we get into the smoother way?”
“Thank you,” said Lydia, “it is not at all necessary. I did not notice where I was going.”
“You prefer not to be helped in anything,” her adversary said.
“Indeed, no; if anybody will help me, I am always very thankful,” Lydia replied.
And then he turned his eyes upon her. “I think you are mistaken in yourself,” he said, quickly, “we often are. You think women should be independent and manage their own affairs.”