"I believe you are right," replies Byng, out of whose voice his kind Mentor has at last succeeded in momentarily conjuring the exaltation. "Her prejudice against them, against her, always filled me with stupefaction. I never dared trust myself to discuss it with her; I was afraid that if I did I might be led into saying something to her, something I should be sorry for afterwards. Thank God, I have never spoken unkindly to her in all my life!"
"You would have been a sweep if you had!" interjects Jim.
"I never heard her give any reason for it, did you? It was as baseless as it was senseless." After a pause, his voice taking on again its inflection of confident, soaring triumph: "But it cannot last—it is absolutely beyond the wildest bounds of possibility that it can last! After five minutes' talk mother will be at her feet; I know my mother so well! Not one of her exquisite ways will be lost upon her, and she will do her very best to win her! Jim, I ask you—I put it to you quietly and plainly—I know you think I am mad, but I am not—I am speaking quite rationally and coolly—but I ask you—you, an impartial bystander—do you think that any human being, anything made of flesh and blood, could resist her—her when she puts herself out to please—her at her very best?"
As Burgoyne is conscious of not being in a position to answer this question with much satisfaction to himself, he leaves it unanswered.
CHAPTER XXV.
"Some say the genius so
Cries 'Come' to him that instantly must die."
A new day has awaked, and Firenze, fresh-washed after yesterday's rain, smelling through all her streets of lilies, laughs up, wistaria-hung, to a fleckless sky. If poor Amelia had but deferred her treat for twenty-four hours, what a different Vallombrosa would she and her companions have carried home in their memories! Amelia's treat!
"I shall not forget Amelia's treat in a hurry!" Burgoyne says to himself, as he sits appetiteless over his solitary breakfast. "I had better go and tell her the result of it."