"How—how are we to divide?" cries Cecilia, as they all stand at the door while the two carriages drive up.
No one answers. The arrangement seems planned by no one in particular, and yet, as he drives down the hill, Burgoyne finds himself sitting opposite the two Misses Wilson. He is thankful that the raised hood and unfurled umbrellas of the second equipage prevent his having any ocular evidence of the ecstasy that that wet leather and that dripping silk veil. But even this consolation is not long left him. As they leave the fir-wood, they come out of the clouds too, into clear, lower air. Hoods are pushed back and umbrellas shut. The horses, in good heart, with homeward-turned heads, pricked with emulation by another carriage ahead of them, trot cheerfully down the road—the road with all its bent-elbow turnings—down, down, into the valley beneath. But the clouds that have rolled away off the evening sky seem to have settled down with double density upon the spirit of Burgoyne and his companions. Even the fountain of Cecilia's chatter is dried. Once she says suddenly à propos de bottes:
"She must be years older than he!" To which Amelia quickly rejoins—
"But she does not look it."
It is almost the only remark she makes during the long drive, and Burgoyne is thankful to her for her silence. Conscious of and grateful for her magnanimity as he is, there is yet something that jars upon him in her intuition of his thoughts, and in her eager championship of that other woman. He looks out blankly at the flowers, wetly smiling from field and bank, at the endless garden of embracing vines and embraced mulberries, joining their young leafage; at the stealing river and the verdurous hill-sides. In vain for him Italy's spring laughter broadens across the eternal youth of her face.
On reaching Florence and the Anglo-Américain, he would fain enter and spend the evening with his betrothed. He has a feverish horror of being left alone with his own thoughts, but she gently forbids him.
"It would not be fair upon father and Sybilla," she says. "I am afraid they have not been getting on very well téte-à-téte together all this wet day, and I should not be much good to you in any case. I feel stupid. You will say"—smiling—"that there is nothing very new in that; but I am quite beyond even my usual mark to-night. Good-night, dear; I humbly beg your pardon for having caused you to spend such a wretched day. I will never give you another treat—never, never! it was my first and last attempt."
She turns from him dejectedly, and he is himself too dejected to attempt any reassuring falsities. She would not have believed him if he had told her that it had not been a wretched day to him, and the publicity of their place of parting forbids him to administer even the silent consolation of a kiss. And yet he feels a sort of remorse at having said nothing, as the door closes upon her depressed back. Backs can look quite as depressed as faces. The lateness of their start home has thrown their return late. Burgoyne reflects that he may as well dine at once, and then trudge through his solitary evening as best he may. Heaven knows at what hour Byng may return. Shall he await his coming, and so get over the announcement of his bliss to-night, or put the dark hours between himself and it?
He decides in favour of getting it over to-night, up to whatever small hour he may be obliged to attend his friend's arrival. But he has not to wait nearly so long as he expects. He has not to wait at all, hardly. Before he has left his own room, while he is still making such toilette for his own company as self-respect requires, the person whom he had not thought to behold for another four or five hours enters—enters with head held high, with joy-tinged, smooth cheeks, and with a superb lamp of love and triumph lit in each young eye. A passing movement of involuntary admiration traverses the other's heart as he looks at him. This is how the human animal ought to—was originally intended to—look! How very far the average specimen has departed from the type! There is not much trace of admiration, however, in the tone which he employs for his one brief word of interrogation:
"Already?"