And it was he who was the first to break the silence. He made a kind of reverence to her, more than a bow, like some sort of old-fashioned filial demonstration. “Madame has something to say to me?” he asked, with an anxiety in his face almost equal to her own.
“Yes,” cried Aunt Milly, “I—I have something to say to you. Sit down, and let me get breath.”
He sat down, and so did we. To see her struggling to overcome the great tremor of excitement she had fallen into, and we all waiting in silence for her words, must have been a very strange scene. It was the merest wonder and curiosity, of course, with Harry and me; but I remember noticing even at that moment that Mr. Luigi was not surprised. He evidently knew something to account for her agitation. He sat looking at her, bending towards her with visible expectation of something. It was no mystery to him.
“Sir—young man,” cried Aunt Milly, with a gasp, “I do not know you; you are a stranger, a foreigner; you have nothing to do with this place. What, in the name of heaven, is it that you have to do with mine or me?”
Mr. Luigi’s countenance fell. He was bitterly disappointed; it was evident in his face. He drew a long breath and clasped his hands together, half in resignation, half appealing against some hard fate. “Ah!” he said, “I did hope otherwise—is it, indeed, indeed, that you know not me?”
Aunt Milly gave a cry half of terror. “I recognise your voice,” she said. “I see gleams in your face of faces I know. I am going out of my wits with bewilderment and trouble; but as sure as you are there before me, I know no more who you are than does the child who cannot speak.”
Mr. Luigi made no reply for some minutes. Then he made some exclamations in Italian, scarcely knowing, I am sure, what he was saying. Then he remembered himself. “Thing most strange! thing most terrible!” cried the young man; “not even now!—not even now!” and he looked round to us with such distress and amazement in his face, and with such an involuntary call for our sympathy, though we knew nothing about it, that his look went to my heart. Aunt Milly saw it, and was confounded by it. His genuine wonder and strange grieved consciousness that she ought to have known this secret, whatever it was, stopped her questions upon her lips. She sat leaning forward looking at him, struck dumb by his looks. I was so excited by the evident reserve on both sides, which implied the existence of a third person whom neither would name, that I burst into it, on the spur of the moment, without thinking whether what I said was sensible or foolish. “Who?” I cried, “who is the other person that knows?”
Both of them started violently; then their eyes met in a strange look of intelligence. Aunt Milly fell back in her chair trembling dreadfully, trembling so much that her teeth chattered. Mr. Luigi rose. “I am at Madame’s disposition,” he said softly; “but what can I say? It is better I be gone while I do not harm Madame, and make her ill. Pardon! it is not I who am to blame!”
Saying so, he took Aunt Milly’s hand, kissed it, and turned to the door. She called him back faintly. “Stop, I have not asked you rightly,” said poor Aunt Milly. “Could not you tell me, without minding anybody else? Are you—are you?—oh! who are you? I do beseech you tell me. If wrong is done you, I have no hand in it. What is there to prevent you telling me?”
“Ah, pardon. I know my duty,” said the young man. “If she will reject me—then! but it is yet too early. I wait—I expect—she has not yet said it to me.”