Anything that speaks less intention of removing than Byng's pose, when his friend rejoins him, it would be difficult to imagine. He is stretched upon the parquet floor, with his head lying on the small footstool that has been wont to support Elizabeth's feet; her rifled workbasket stands on the floor beside him, while her bit of embroidery half shrouds his distorted face. The needle, still sticking in it, may prick his eyes out for all he cares; the book she last read is open at the page where she has put her mark of a skein of pale silk; and the yellow anemones, that he must have plucked for her yesterday in drenched Vallombrosa, are crushed under his hot cheek. But outwardly he is quite quiet. Jim puts his hand on his shoulder.
"Come away, there is no use in your staying here any longer."
As he receives no answer, he repeats the exhortation more imperatively, "Come."
"Why should I come? Where should I come to?" says the young man, lifting his head, "where can I find such plain traces of her as here? I will stay."
He says this with an air of resolution, and once more lays down his face upon the footstool, which, being entirely worked in beads, has impressed the cheek thrust against it with a design in small hollows, a fact of which the sufferer is quite unaware.
"You cannot stay!" cries Burgoyne, the more impatiently that his own share of anxiety is fretting his temper almost past endurance; "you cannot stay, it is out of the question; they want to come into the rooms, to prepare them for new occupants."
"New occupants!" repeats Byng, turning over almost on his face, and flattening his nose and lips against the beaded surface of his stool, "other occupants than her. Never! never!"
It is to be placed to the credit side of Mr. Burgoyne's account that he does not, upon this declaration, withdraw the resting-place from his young friend's countenance and break it over his head. It is certainly not the temptation to do so that is lacking. Instead, he sits down at some distance off, and says quietly:
"I see, you will force them to call in the police. You will make a discreditable esclandre. How good for her; how conducive to her good name. I congratulate you!"
The other has lifted his head in a moment.