The genuine eagerness of his proposal has tinged her sickly-coloured cheek with a healthier hue for the moment, but she shakes her head.
"I could not leave father this morning; he will not take his medicine from anyone else, and he likes me to sit with him while he eats his arrowroot."
The only sign of approval of this instance of filial piety given by Jim is that he rises and begins to stamp irritably about the room.
"He is really not at all exacting," continues Amelia in anxious deprecation; "he was quite pleased just now when I told him that Mrs. Byng was going to take me to a party at the Villa Schiavone this afternoon. He said——"
"Mrs. Byng! Mrs. Byng again!"
This is not what Mr. Wilson said, but is the expression of the unjust wrath which Burgoyne, feeling it much pleasanter to be angry with someone else than himself is artificially and not unsuccessfully fostering. Again Amelia's lip quivers.
"I thought," she says gently, "if—if you have no other engagement this afternoon; if—if you are free——"
Nothing can be milder than the form which this suggestion takes, and yet there is something in its shape that provokes him.
"Free!" he interrupts tartly, "of course I am free! Have I a gouty father and a hysteric sister? Why should not I be free?"
"I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she—the light that his first proposal to take her out had brought into her face growing brighter and more established—"because in that case there is nothing to prevent your meeting us at the villa, and——"