‘Yes, that was our happy time!’ she cried, hotly. ‘The time when we were free of all interference. My father was honoured and loved by everybody.’
‘Oh! I don’t doubt it, I don’t doubt it,’ said Mr. Courtenay, hurriedly, for she looked very much as if she might be going to cry. ‘Spain is very interesting, and so is Italy. It will be pleasant for you to go back.’
‘I don’t think it will,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Things will be so different.’ And then, after a pause, she added, with nervous haste, ‘Kate may like it, perhaps, but not I.’
Mr. Courtenay thought it best to pause. He had no wish to be made a confidant, or to have Ombra’s grievances against Kate poured into his ears. He leaned back in his chair, and watched with grim amusement while the visitors went and came. Mr. Sugden had come in while he had been talking, and was now to be seen standing like a tall shadow by the other side of the window, looking down upon Ombra; and a nervous expectation had become visible in her, which caught Mr. Courtenay’s eye. She did not look up when the door opened, but, on the contrary, kept her eyes fixed on the work she held in her hand with a rigidity which betrayed her more than curiosity would have done. She would not look up, but she listened with a hot, hectic flush on the upper part of her cheeks, just under her drooped eyelids, holding her breath, and sitting motionless in the suspense which devoured her. The needle shook in her hand, and all the efforts she made to keep it steady did but reveal the more the excitement of all her nerves. Mr. Courtenay watched her with growing curiosity; he was not sympathetic; but it was something new to him and entertaining, and he watched as if he had been at a theatre. He did not mean to be cruel; it was to him like a child’s fit of pouting. It was something about love, no doubt, he said to himself. Poor little fool! Somebody had interfered with her love—her last plaything; perhaps Kate, who looked very capable of doing mischief in such matters; and how unhappy she was making herself about nothing at all!
At last the anxiety came to a sudden stop; the hand gave one jerk more violent than before; the eyes shot out a sudden gleam, and then Ombra was suddenly, significantly still. Mr. Courtenay looked up, and saw that two young men had come into the room, so much like each other that he was startled, and did not know what to make of it. As he looked up, with an incipient smile on his face, he caught the eye of the tall Curate on the other side of the window, who was looking at him threateningly. ‘Good heavens! what have I done?’ said Mr. Courtenay to himself, much amazed. ‘I have not fallen in love with the irresistible Ombra!’ He was still more entertained when he discovered that the look which he had thus intercepted was on its way to the new comers, whom Ombra did not look at, but whose coming had affected her so strangely. Here was an entire drama in the smallest possible space. An agitated maiden on the eve of parting with her lover; a second jealous lover looking on. ‘Thank heaven it is not Kate!’ Mr. Courtenay said from the bottom of his heart. The sight of this little scene made him feel more and more the danger from which he had escaped. He had escaped it, but only by a hair’s-breadth; and, thank the kind fates, was looking on with amusement at a story which did not concern him; not with dismay and consternation at a private embarrassment and difficulty of his own. This sense of a hairbreadth escape gave the little spectacle zest. He looked on with genuine amusement, like a true critic, delighted with the show of human emotion which was taking place before his eyes.
‘Who are these two young fellows?’ he asked Ombra, determined to have the whole advantage of the situation, and draw her out to the utmost of his power.
‘What two?’ she said, looking up suddenly, with a dull red flush on her cheek and a choked voice. ‘Oh! they are Mr. Hardwick and Mr. Eldridge; two—gentlemen—mamma knows.’
They were both talking to Kate, standing one on either side of her in the middle of the room. Ombra gave them a long intent look, with the colour deepening in her face, and the breath coming quick from her lips. She took in the group in every detail, as if it had been drawn in lines of fire. How unconscious Kate looked standing there, talking easily, in all the freedom of her unawakened youth. ‘Heaven be praised!’ thought Mr. Courtenay once more, pious for the first time in his life.
‘What! not brothers? What a strange likeness, then!’ he said, tranquilly. ‘I suppose one of them is young Hardwick, from Langton-Courtenay, whom Kate knew at home. He is a parson, like his father, I suppose?’
‘No,’ said Ombra, dropping her eyes once more upon her work.