"I will stay here till I die—till I am carried over the threshold that her cruel feet have crossed.
"'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?'"
Against a resolution at once so fixed and so rational, Jim sees that it is useless to contend.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The sun rides high, as Burgoyne issues into the open air, and beats, blinding hot, upon the great stone flags that pave the Florentine streets, and seem to have a peculiar power of absorbing and retaining light and heat. He must have been longer in the Piazza d'Azeglio than he had thought, and the reflection quickens his steps as he hurries, regardless of the midsummer blaze—for, indeed, it is more than equivalent to that of our midsummer—back to the Anglo-Américain. As he reaches it, he hears, with annoyance, the hotel clocks striking one. He is annoyed, both because the length of his absence seems to argue an indifference to the tidings he is expecting, and also because he knows that it is the Wilsons' luncheon hour, and that he will probably find that they have migrated to the salle-à-manger. In this case he will have to choose between the two equally disagreeable alternatives of following and watching them at their food, or that of undergoing a tête-à-tête with Sybilla, who, it is needless to say, does not accompany her family to the public dining-room; a tête-à-tête with Sybilla, which is, of all forms of social intercourse, that for which he has the least relish.
But as he apprehensively opens the salon door, he sees that his fears are unfounded. They have not yet gone to luncheon; they are all sitting in much the same attitudes as he had left them, except that Sybilla is eating or drinking something of a soupy nature out of a cup. There are very few hours of the day or night in which Sybilla is not eating something out of a cup. There is that about the entire idleness of the other couple which gives him a fright. Are they too unhappy? Have they heard too bad news to be able to settle to any occupation? Urged by this alarm, his question shoots out, almost before he is inside the door:
"Has not he come yet? Has not the doctor come yet?"
"He has been and gone; you see, you have been such a very long time away," replies Cecilia. She has no intention of conveying reproach, either by her words or tone; but to his sore conscience it seems as if both carried it.