Jim glances affectionately, yet not quite comfortably, at his young friend, and the thought dashes across his mind that, in his last remark, the latter has put the saddle on the wrong horse.
"You have so large an acquaintance in Florence already," he says, with some stiffness, "that I did not know that you would care to add to it."
"One cannot have too much of a good thing," replies the other joyously. "You know I love my fellow-creatures; and in this case," he adds civilly, "I do care very much."
Burgoyne's eyes are bent on the paper before him, which contains the melancholy enumeration of his firearms—"A 500 double-barrelled express, by Henry, of Edinburgh; a 450 single-barrelled ditto, by same maker," etc., etc.—as he says slowly:
"I shall be very happy."
His acceptance of the proposition can hardly be called eager; but of this Byng appears unawares.
"When shall it be, then? To-day—this afternoon?"
"No-o-o; not to-day, I think. It has been arranged that we are to go to San Miniato—Amelia, her sister, and I."
"Three of you?" cries Byng, raising his eyebrows. "Then why not four? Why may not I come too?"
There being, in point of fact, no reason why he should not, and Cecilia's morning prayer being still ringing in her future brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and lagging assent; so that at about three o'clock the two men present themselves at the door of the Wilsons' apartment at the Anglo-Américain Hotel. That Sybilla is not expecting visitors is evident by the fact that, at the moment of their entrance, she is taking her own temperature—a very favourite relaxation of hers—with a clinical thermometer. She removes the instrument from her mouth without indecent haste, and holds out a languid white hand to Byng.