As he makes this reflection, he rises with some alacrity, and, leaving his scarcely-tasted coffee and his not-at-all-tasted omelette, walks out of the salle-à-manger. His motive for so early a visit to the Anglo-Américain is less an excessive eagerness to proclaim his piece of news than the thought that by so doing he will, at least for a few hours, escape the necessity of being in his young friend's company. As to where that young friend at present is, whether, after having wandered about the town all night, he is now sleeping late, or whether he is already off to persecute poor Mrs. Le Marchant for that maternal blessing which she has so little inclination to give, Jim is ignorant. All he knows is that such another dose of Byng's erotic eloquence as he had to swallow last night will leave him (Burgoyne) either a murderer or suicide.
Owing to his arrival at the Anglo-Américain so much sooner than usual, he finds himself coming in for the ceremony of Sybilla's installation for the day in the drawing-room. There is always a little pomp and fussy bustle about this rite. Sybilla totters in (grave doubts have occasionally crossed the minds of her family as to whether she does not in reality possess a pair of excellent and thoroughly dependable legs), supported on one side by Amelia and on the other by her maid. Cecilia goes before with an air cushion, and Mr. Wilson follows, when he does not turn restive—which is sometimes the case—with a duvet. To-day, as I have said, this rite is in full celebration when Jim arrives, but it is being performed with mutilated glories. The rite is going forward, but the high priest is absent. That ministrant, upon whose arm the sufferer is wont to lean far the most heavily; she upon whom devolves the whole responsibility of arranging the three cushions behind the long limp back; the properly covering the languid feet; the nice administering of the reviving cordial drops that are to repair the fatigue of the transit from bedroom to sitting-room—that most important and unfailing ministrant is nowhere to be seen. No artist wishes his picture to be viewed in an inchoate, unfinished stage, nor is Sybilla at all anxious to have the public admitted to the sight of that eminent work of art herself until she is stretched in faint, moribund, graceful completeness on her day-bed. At the moment of Burgoyne's entry she has just reached that unbecoming point, where she is sitting sideways on her sofa, before her wasted limbs—Burgoyne is one of those heretics who have never believed that they are wasted—have been carefully lifted into their final posture of extension upon the Austrian blanket. It is, of all moments, the one at which interruption is least welcome; nor is the intruder at all surprised at being greeted by the invalid with a more than sub-acid accent.
"My dear Jim, already! Why you become more matinale every day! you are the early bird indeed! You do not"—with an annoyed laugh—"give us poor worms a chance of being beforehand with you."
"I am very sorry if I am too soon," replies he, his eyes wandering away from the fretful features before him in search of others upon which he knows he shall find written no complaint of his prematureness—"but I came to——Where's Amelia?"
"You may well ask," replies Sybilla, with a sort of hysterical laugh. "It is pretty evident that she is not here! My dear Cis, would you mind remembering that my head is not made of mahogany? you gave it such a bang with that cushion. I am very sorry to trouble you. The heaviest load a sick person has to bear is the feeling that she is such a burden to those around her; and certainly, my dear, you do not help me to forget it."
"Where is she?" repeats Burgoyne hastily, both because he wants to know, and because he is anxious to strangle in its infancy one of those ignoble family bickerings, to assist at many of which has been the privilege or penalty of his state of intimacy.
"She is not well," replies Cecilia shortly, her rosy face rosier than usual, either with the joy of imminent battle, or with the exertion of swaddling, under protest, the invalid's now elevated legs.
"Not well! Amelia not well," echoes he, in a tone of incredulity.
During all the years of their acquaintance not once has he heard his patient sweetheart complain of ache or pain. Manlike, he has therefore concluded that she can never have felt either.
"It is very thoughtless of her," says Cecilia, with a not altogether amiable laugh, and giving a final irritated slap to Sybilla's coverlet—"considering how much illness we already have in the house; ha! ha! but it is true all the same: she is not well, not at all well; she is in bed."