"Absolutely."
"Do you mean to say that up to yesterday—all through yesterday, even—she never gave you a hint of any intention of leaving Florence?"
"Never, never. On the contrary, in the——" (he is going to say "the wood," but thinks better of it), "we were planning many more such expeditions as yesterday's. At least, I was planning them."
"And she assented?"
"She did not dissent. She met me with a look of divine acquiescence."
Jim turns away his head. He is involuntarily picturing to himself what that look was like, and with what sweet dumb-show it was accompanied.
"What powers of hell"—banging his head down upon the table again—"could have wrought such a hideous change in so few hours? Only ten! for it was eight in the evening before I left them, and they were off at six this morning. They could have seen no one; they had received no letters, no telegrams, for I inquired of Annunziata, and she assured me that they had not. Oh no!"—lifting his face with a gleam of moist hope upon it—"there is only one tenable hypothesis about it—it is not her doing at all. She wrote this under pressure. It is her handwriting, is it not?—though I would not swear even to that. I—I have played the mischief with my eyes"—pulling out his drenched pocket-handkerchief, and hastily wiping them—"so that I cannot see properly; but it is hers, is not it?"
"I do not know; I never saw her handwriting; she never wrote to me."
"It was evidently dictated to her," cries Byng, his sanguine nature taking an upward spring again; "there are clear traces, even in the very way the letters are formed, of its being written to order reluctantly. She did it under protest. See how her poor little hand was shaking, and she was crying all the while, bless her! There, do not you see a blister on the paper—here on this side?"
Burgoyne does not see any blister, but as he thinks it extremely probable that there was one, he does not think himself called upon to wound his friend by saying so.