"I—I—had rather have had you to myself."
"Would you really?" she asks, in the almost awed tones of one who, from being quite destitute, has had the Koh-i-Noor put into his hand, and whose fingers are afraid to close over the mighty jewel; "would you really? then I am sorry I asked them; but"—with intense wistfulness—"if you only knew how I long to give you a little pleasure, a little enjoyment—you who have given me so infinitely much."
If Miss Wilson were ever addicted to the figure of speech called irony, she might be supposed to be employing it now; but one glance at her simple face would show that it expressed nothing but adoring gratitude. Her one good fortnight has spread its radiant veil backwards over her eight barren years.
He takes her hand, and passes the fingers across his lips, murmuring indistinctly and guiltily behind them:
"Do I really make you happy?"
"Do you?"—echoes she, while the transfiguring tears well into her glorified pale eyes—"I should not have thought it possible that so much joy could have been packed into any fortnight as I have had crammed into mine!"
They have to set off to Vallombrosa at seven o'clock in the morning, an hour at which few of us are at our cleverest, handsomest, or our best tempered; nor is the party of six, either in its proportion of women to men—four to two—or in its component parts, a very well adjusted one. They are too numerous to be contained in one carriage, and are therefore divided into two separate bands—three and three. Whether by some manœuvre of the well-meaning Amelia, or by some scarcely fortunate accident, Burgoyne finds himself seated opposite to his betrothed and to Elizabeth; while Byng follows in the second vehicle as vis-à-vis to Cecilia and Mrs. Le Marchant. There is a general feeling of wrongness about the whole arrangement—a sense of mental discomfort equivalent to that physical one of having put on your clothes inside out, or buttoned your buttons into unanswering buttonholes.
Mrs. Le Marchant's face, as Burgoyne catches sight of it now and then, as some turn in the road reveals the inmates of the closely-following second carriage to his view, wears that uneasy and disquieted look which always disfigures it when there is any question of her being brought into personal relation with strangers. And Elizabeth, of whom he has naturally a much nearer and more continuous view, is plainly ill-at-ease. Miss Wilson has not thought it necessary to mention to her lover how strong had been the opposition to her plan on the part of the objects of it; nor, that it was only because her proposal was made vivâ voce, and therefore unescapable, that it had been reluctantly accepted at last. At first Burgoyne had attributed Elizabeth's evident ill-at-easeness to her separation from Byng; but he presently discovers that it is what she possesses, and not what she lacks, that is the chief source of her malaise. During the latter part of his own personal intercourse with her she had been, when in his company, sometimes sad, sometimes wildly merry; but always entirely natural. Strange as it may seem, it is obviously the presence of Amelia that puts constraint upon her. Before the spirit of that most unterrifying of God's creatures, Elizabeth's "stands rebuked." Once or twice he sees her inborn gaiety—that gaiety whose existence he has so often noted as it struggles up from under the mysterious weight of sorrow laid upon it—spurt into life, only to be instantly killed by the reassumption of that nervous formal manner which not all Amelia's gentle efforts can break through.
A very grave trio they drive along through the grave day. For it is, alas! a grave day—overcast, now turning to rain, now growing fair again awhile. Not a grain of Italy's summer curse, her choking white dust, assails their nostrils. It must have rained all night. Through the suburbs by the river, crossing and recrossing that ugly iron interloper the railway; by the river flowing at the foot of the fair green hills, so green, so green on this day of ripe accomplished spring. The whole country is one giant green garland, of young wheat below and endless vine necklaces above—necklaces of new juicy, just-born, yet vigorous vine-leaves. The very river runs green with the reflection of the endless verdure on its banks. The road is level as far as Pontassieve, the town through which they roll, and then it begins to mount—mounts between garden-like hills, dressed in vine leaves and iris-flowers, and the dull fire of red clover; while the stream twists in flowing companionship at the valley bottom, until they turn abruptly away from it, up into a steep and narrow valley, almost a gorge, and climb up and up one side of it, turning and winding continually to break the steepness of the ascent. However broken, it is steep still. But who would wish to pass at more than a foot's pace through this great sheet of lilac irises wrapping the mountain side, past this bean-field that greets the nostrils with its homely familiar perfume, along this wealthy bit of hedge, framed wholly of honeysuckle in flower? At sight of the latter Elizabeth gives a little cry.
"Oh, what honeysuckle! I must have some! I must get out! Tell him to stop!"