“Perhaps it is my fault. But that does not alter the fact, Edmund. If I say that I am sorry, that is little, but still it does not mend it. In Italy everything will amuse you.”
“Nothing will amuse me,” said the young man. “I tell you I don’t care for scenery. What I want to see is life.”
“In travelling,” said Mrs. Trevanion, “you often make friends, and you see how the people of other countries live, and you learn—”
“I don’t want to learn,” he cried abruptly. “You are always harping upon that. It is too late to go to school at my age. If I have no education you must put up with it, for it is your fault. And what I want is to stay here. London is the place to learn life and everything. And if you tell me that you couldn’t get me plenty of friends, if you chose to exert yourself, I don’t believe you. It’s because you won’t, not because you can’t.”
“Edmund!”
“Oh, don’t contradict me, for I know better. There is one thing I want above all others, and I know you mean to go against me in that. If you stay here quiet, you know very well they will come to town like everybody else, for the season, and then you can introduce me. She knows me already. The last time she saw me she colored up. She knew very well what I was after. This has always been in my mind since the first time I saw her with you. She is fond of you. She will be glad enough to come, if it is even on the sly—”
He was very quick to see when he had gone wrong, and the little cry that came from her lips, the look that came over her face, warned him a moment too late. He “colored up,” as he said, crimson to the eyes, and endeavored with an uneasy laugh to account for his slip. “The expression may be vulgar,” he said, “but everybody uses it. And that’s about what it would come to, I suppose.”
“You mistake me altogether, Edmund,” she said. “I will not see any one on the sly, as you say; and especially not— Don’t wound me by suggesting what is impossible. If I had not known that I had no alternative, can you suppose I should have left them at all?”
“That’s a different matter; you were obliged to do that; but nobody could prevent you meeting them in the streets, seeing them as they pass, saying ‘How do you do?’ introducing a relation—”
She rose up, and began to pace about the room in great agitation. “Don’t say any more, don’t torture me like this,” she said. “Can you not understand how you are tearing me to pieces? If I were to do what you say, I should be dishonest, false both to the living and the dead. And it would be better to be at the end of the world than to be near them in a continual fever, watching, scheming, for a word. Oh, no! no!” she said, wringing her hands, “do not let me be tempted beyond my strength. Edmund, for my sake, if for no other, let us go away.”