‘You have come at last,’ she said, holding out her hand to him. ‘What has been wrong? I thought you had forsaken us;’ and looked at him full in the face with candid, unembarrassed eyes.
‘Nothing has been wrong,’ said Laurie, holding her hand fast. His heart began to beat, but what could a man say in cold blood with a pair of frank, steady eyes looking at him, restraining him with their friendliness? The padrona withdrew her hand without even any appearance of wonder at his clinging clasp. She was glad to see him. She had wanted to see him; and new events had come in, effacing from her mind for the moment her temporary alarm on his account; and she could understand that he was glad to come back, though his absence had lasted only three days.
‘I was looking over some old sketches,’ she said. ‘I told you of the commission Mr. Rich had given me; I was looking for a drawing my dear Harry made some years ago,—you may have seen it,—for Cinderella. It would be a pleasure to me to go upon that; but I can’t find it in all those great portfolios,’ she said, with a sigh. Why she should have brought poor Severn in at that special moment it would have been hard to say; perhaps it was chance alone; perhaps there was in her some unconscious warning of nature as to what was coming. Laurie withdrew a step or two with sudden discomfiture. He hated poor Severn for the moment as he had never hated any man before.
‘You will do it much better yourself,’ he said, and his tone was such that the padrona turned and looked at him with wonder in her eyes.
‘How strangely you speak!’ she said; ‘and now I look at you, how strangely you look, Laurie! What is the matter? I have scarcely seen you since you were so good to the Suffolks. Something has happened. I heard from them last night that you had been in the country. Is it anything about home?’
‘No,’ said Laurie, in a kind of despair, ‘it is nothing about home.’
‘Perhaps it is something you cannot tell me,’ said the padrona, ‘and in that case never mind my questions; you may be sure of my sympathy anyhow, even without explanation. If you are vexed, I am sorry; you know that.’
‘How should I know it?’ said Laurie. ‘Yes, perhaps if I did not tell you,—if I left it to your imagination,—you are so kind to everybody,—you would be kind to me. If I did not tell you,—that might be my safeguard!’ For by this time it had begun to appear to him that madness itself could not be more mad than his dream.
‘It is strange to hear you speak so to me,’ said Mrs. Severn. ‘I never thought of being kind to you, as I am kind to everybody. What is it, Laurie,—tell me?’ And she laid her hand softly on his arm.
Then the young man’s composure and his boldness both abandoned him. He took her hand and kissed it wildly. ‘Perhaps it would be best to go and leave you,’ he cried, ‘never to come near you more!’ And then he left her, and paced up and down the room, trying to master the strange tumult of his thoughts. Nothing in the world could have disarmed him as her kindness did, and sympathy. But as he turned away, the padrona came to herself, or rather came to a recollection of the warning she had received. In a moment she saw how it was; and, as was natural, in a moment her anxiety to know what ailed him suddenly came to an end. Mr. Rich’s commission, which was a great event to Mrs. Severn, had startled her out of thought of Laurie. His little hieroglyph at the end of his note had gone almost unnoticed in the excitement of the moment, and every hour had been occupied since then. But now it all rushed back upon her, and the error she had been guilty of in asking any questions. If she had not made this discovery, most likely her sympathetic, kind unconsciousness would have staved off what was coming. But the moment she found it out, a thrill of tremulous knowledge came into her voice.