There was one meeting, however, in which Evelyn’s feelings were exercised in a more complicated and difficult way. She had kept safe from all encounter with Saumarez, whose invalid chair she had seen repeatedly in the distance with a sense of an escape, until the very last day, which Rowland had insisted upon devoting to amusement alone. “Why shouldn’t we begin with this ‘Row’ which I hear everybody speaking of?”
“Oh, it is too early for the Row.”
“Never mind; it seems to be pretty, and to have pretty people about it. I want to sit down on a chair and look at them.”
“As if you were a man to sit long quiet on a chair!”
“Come along, Evelyn. I believe you’re jealous of the pretty girls,” he said with his big laugh. How well she had known how it would be! Saumarez had no objection at any time to be seen of the crowd. He had grown to feel his helplessness a distinction as he would have felt anything else that belonged to him. But his time for his promenade was before the fashionable hour, and the Rowlands had not gone half the way along before the well-known chair became visible slowly approaching. Evelyn gripped her husband’s arm.
“James, I see an invalid chair there in front of us, with three ladies standing round it. I rather think it must be Mr. Saumarez. He is sure to see us; he will ask to be introduced to you.”
“Well, my dear: if you would rather not let’s turn back; otherwise, it makes no difference to me. Yes, I might almost say I have a kind of curiosity—but not if it trouble you.”
“How should it trouble me?” said Evelyn. But yet it did, though there was no reason for it. What was her reason? A half vexation that her husband should see him so humiliated, so helpless and pitiful a spectacle; a half terror to see her husband reflected through his eyes. But there was no help for it now.
“Make me acquainted with Mr. Rowland, my dear lady,” Saumarez said. “I have wanted to make his acquaintance ever since I heard—how lucky a man he was.”
“You may say that,” said Rowland heartily, “the luckiest man, I think, in the whole world.”