‘On the contrary,’ said Mr. Courtenay, with his best bow, ‘if you would entertain the idea—if it suits with your other plans to go to Langton till Kate comes of age, it would be everything that I could desire.’
The three looked at each other for a full moment in uncertainty and wonder. And then Kate suddenly jumped up, overturned the little table by her side, on which stood the remains of her violets, and danced round the room with wild delight.
‘Oh! let us go at once!—let us leave this horrid old picture-gallery! Let us go home, home!’ she cried, in an outburst of joy. The vase was broken, and the dead violets strewed over the carpet. Francesca came in and swept them away, and no one took any notice. That was over. And now for home—for home!
CHAPTER L.
The success of this move had gone far beyond Mr. Courtenay’s highest hopes. He was unprepared for the suddenness of its acceptance. He went off and told Lady Caryisfort, with a surprise and satisfaction that was almost rueful. ‘Since that woman came into my niece’s affairs,’ he said, ‘I have had to sacrifice something for every step I have gained; and I find that I have made the sacrifice exactly when it suited her—to buy a concession she was dying to make. I never meant her to set foot in Langton, and now she is going there as mistress; and just, I am certain, at the time it suits her to go. This is what happens to a simple-minded man when he ventures to enter the lists with women. I have a great mind to put everything in her hands and retire from the field.’
‘I don’t think she is so clever as you give her credit for,’ said Lady Caryisfort, who was somewhat languid after the night’s exertions. ‘I suspect it was you who found out the moment that suited you rather than she.’
But she gave him, in her turn, an account of what she had done, and they formed an alliance offensive and defensive—a public treaty of friendship for the world’s inspection, and a secret alliance known only to themselves, by the conditions of which Lady Caryisfort bound herself to repair to London and take Kate under her charge when it should be thought necessary and expedient by the allied powers. She pledged herself to present the heiress and watch over her and guard her from all match-makers, that the humble chaperon might be dismissed, and allowed to go in peace. When he had concluded this bargain Mr. Courtenay went away with a lighter heart, to make preparations for his niece’s return. He had been most successful in his pretence to get her away from Florence; and now this second arrangement to get rid of the relations who would be no longer necessary, seemed to him a miracle of diplomacy. He chuckled to himself over it, and rubbed his hands.
‘Kate must not be treated as a child any longer—she is grown up, she has a judgment of her own,’ he said, with a delicious sense of humour; and then he listened very gravely to all her enthusiastic descriptions of what she was to do when she got to Langton. Kate, however, after the first glow of her resolution, did not feel the matter so easy as it appeared. She had no thought of the violets, which Francesca swept up, at the moment; but afterwards the recollection of them came back to her. She had allowed them to be swept away without a thought. What a cold heart—what an ungrateful nature—she must have! And poor Antonio! In the light of Langton, Antonio looked to her all at once impossible—as impossible as it would be to transplant his old palace to English soil. No way could the two ideas be harmonised. She puckered her brows over it till she made her head ache. Count Buoncompagni and Langton-Courtenay! They would not come together—could not—it was impossible! Indeed the one idea chased the other from her mind. And how was she to intimate this strange and cruel fact to him? How was she to show that all his graceful attentions must be brought to an end?—that she was going home, and all must be over! And the worst was that it could not be done gradually; but one way or another must be managed at once.
The next day Lady Caryisfort came, as usual, on her way to the Cascine; but, to Kate’s surprise and relief, and, it must be owned, also to her disappointment, Antonio was not there. She declined the next invitation to Lady Caryisfort’s, inventing a headache for the occasion, and growing more and more perplexed the longer she thought over that difficult matter. It was while she was musing thus that Bertie Hardwick one day managed to get beside her for a moment, while Ombra was talking to his cousin. Bertie Eldridge had raised a discussion about some literary matter, and the two had gone to consult a book in the little ante-room, which served as a kind of library; the other Bertie was left alone with Kate, a thing which had not happened before for weeks. He went up to her the moment they were gone, and stood hesitating and embarrassed before her.