The effort to induce Miss Ransome to drop the use of her mother’s Christian name in their tête-à-têtes had long been pusillanimously abandoned by Edward, and he now listened with a dull reflection how harmoniously immoral the surroundings of poor Bonnybell’s infancy and childhood had been, not even her nurse’s daughter having been able to refrain from having an illegitimate baby.
“I never could have believed that I could have grown to love the country so dearly,” pursued Bonnybell, inwardly wondering at the unaccountably occupied air of Edward, and determining to be even more endearingly rural than usual.
“And yet you would rather be in London, wouldn’t you?”
It was the first question he had put to her since their walk began, and she smiled inwardly at its superfluousness. Of course she had rather be in London. Who but a fool wouldn’t? London or Paris! Were there any other places where a sane person who was not fifty, and had not a young husband whom she wanted to keep an eye upon, could wish to live? The only fear was lest her answer should let pierce through too much of the internal radiance kindled by the suggestion.
“Are we going up, after all? Has Mrs. Tancred changed her plans?”
Edward’s answer lagged. He had not meant to tell his companion of the imminent change in their lives, yet now he felt that he was going to do so.
“Why should it be ‘we’?” he asked presently, with an exaggeration of his suggestive and querying manner. “Would not it do as well if you were going up?”
Her face told him that it would not. Half the light of glad expectation went out of it, and he was guiltily aware of the first sensation of pleasure that had touched him since Camilla’s communication.
“Are you only teasing me,” she asked, with a not artificial tremolo in her voice, “or do you really mean that I am to be sent away, after all? I—I—hoped that I had not done anything fresh lately.”
Her fallen countenance, the trembling diffidence of her accents, the cloud that, settling on her face, contrasted with the sunbeam which had shot through the leafless twigs to dance there, made him heartily repent of the undertaking on which he had embarked. Why could not he have left it to Camilla? Then a knife of self-reproach turned in the fresh wound in his heart. Had not he always left everything disagreeable to Camilla? Was not it time—the time of which probably so little would be left to him—to take some share of the burden he had for fifteen years been shifting on to those enduring shoulders?