"I brought Mr. Burgoyne in here," says Elizabeth, in what seems rather precipitate explanation, "because we could not talk comfortably out on the terrace; they listen to everything we say: they have such long ears—the Widow Wadman and Miss Strutt!"
"I do not know what State secrets you and Mr. Burgoyne can have to discuss," replies the mother, with a smile that, though courteous, but ill disguises the underlying anxiety. "Yes, dear child, I shall be very much obliged if you will take my bonnet upstairs for me"—this in answer to little tender overtures from Elizabeth, overtures that remind Jim of 12 bis, Piazza d' Azeglio. "I do not know whether you have yet found it so" (to Jim); "but this is a slack place."
No sooner has the door closed upon her daughter than her tone changes.
"What have you been talking about to her," she inquires rapidly; "not, I hope, about him?"
"I could not help it; she asked me."
Mrs. Le Marchant strikes her hands together, and gives utterance to that short and shapeless monosyllable which has a prescriptive right to express vexation.
"Th! th!" A moment later, "I am sure you will understand that I do not mean to imply any ill-will to you; but it is unlucky that we should have happened to meet you here; it has brought it all back to her, and she was just beginning to pluck up her spirits a little."
"Did she—did she take it so much to heart?" inquires Jim, in a tone of almost as awed concern as Elizabeth had employed but a quarter of an hour before in putting nearly the same question with regard to Byng.
"Did she take it to heart!" repeats Mrs. Le Marchant, with the irritation of one to whom a perfectly senseless and superfluous inquiry is put; "why, of course she did! I thought at one time that she would have gone out of her mind!"
No one can feel less merry than Jim; and yet his lips at this juncture cannot resist the impulse to frame themselves into a gloomy smile.