‘But what are you going to do—’ throwing herself back in the chair with a sudden—‘but oh, I must not enquire.’
I went on to say that ‘in the first place my going would not take place till quite the end of September if so soon,—that I had determined to make no premature fuss,—and that, for the actual present, nothing was either to be done or said.
‘Very sudden then, it is to be. In fact, there is only an elopement for you—’ she observed laughing.
So I was obliged to laugh.
(But, dearest, nobody will use such a word surely to the event. We shall be in such an obvious exercise of Right by Daylight—surely nobody will use such a word.)
I talked of Mr. Kenyon,—how he had been with me yesterday and brought the mountains of the Earth into my room—‘which was almost too much,’ I said, ‘for a prisoner.’ ‘Yes—but if you go to Italy....’
‘But Mr. Kenyon thinks I shall not. In his opinion, my case is desperate.’
‘But I tell you that it is not. Nobody’s case is desperate when the will is not at fault. And a woman’s will when she wills thoroughly as I hope you do, is strong enough to overcome. When I hear people say that circumstances are against them, I always retort, ... you mean that your will is not with you! I believe in the will—I have faith in it.’
There is an oracle for us, to remember for good! She goes to Paris, she says, with her niece, between the seventh and tenth of September,—and after a few days at Paris she goes to Orleans for the cathedral’s sake—but what follows is doubtful ... Italy is doubtful. Only that my opinion is, as I told her, that if Italy is doubtful here in London, at Orleans, when she gets there, it will be certain. She will not resist the attraction towards the South. She looked at me all the while she told me this ... looked into my eyes, like a Diviner.
On Monday morning she comes to see me again. It is all painful, or rather unpleasant. One should not use strong words out of place, and there will remain too much use for this. How I teaze you now!