Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

A little later Burgo could not help asking himself whether Tina might not have been purposely sent with them in order to act as a check upon any confidential talk which might otherwise have passed between his uncle and himself in the course of the drive. At any rate, if that was her ladyship's intention, it proved thoroughly successful. The girl was such a shrewd little thing, and had so evidently been schooled into making good use of her ears, that both the men felt convinced that everything which might be said by them would be retailed to the signora, and would doubtless be passed on in due course to the person chiefly concerned. Consequently the talk was merely of such a kind as might have been overheard by the world at large. One remark which his uncle made gratified Burgo immensely. "Hoskins found a marked improvement in me this morning," he said; adding, with a laugh, "of course he gives all the credit of it to the particularly nauseous stuff I'm taking just now. But, and I would, I could tell him different from that."

Sir Everard shrank from the publicity of the Row. "I've only been once in it since my return," he said, "and on that occasion, if I was commiserated by one person on the score of my health, I was by twenty. It's an ordeal I don't care to face again. Let us take a quiet drive down Kensington way."

The rest of the day and evening passed as the preceding ones had done. After dinner came music and singing, and the baronet went so far as to indulge in one game of backgammon with his nephew. "It seems like old days come back," he remarked to Burgo, adding in a lower voice, "if only it will last! if only it will last!"

Soon after half-past nine he retired.

Burgo's second vigil was arranged on precisely the same lines as the first. His uncle slept well, only waking twice at irregular intervals, both times to find Burgo seated within a couple of yards of his bed, waiting patiently for him to open his eyes. In the course of this second night no conversation of what might be termed a private nature passed between them. More than once, when Sir Everard was sitting up in bed, Burgo saw him glance half-apprehensively, half-suspiciously at the door which opened into his wife's apartments, or rather, at the portière, which to-night was drawn completely across it. But whatever his thoughts or suspicions might be, he kept them to himself.

Next forenoon Dr. Hoskins's report was again a favourable one. "A few more days like this, my clear sir, and you will have made a big stride on the road to recovery," he said.

After luncheon her ladyship and the signora again went out together, ostensibly for shopping purposes, and again Sir Everard and Burgo, with little Tina for eavesdropper, went for a long suburban drive.

The third night of Burgo's sitting up was merely a repetition of the two previous ones. It was diversified by no incident worth recording, and again, as on the second night, the invalid confined such talk as passed between himself and his nephew to matters of little or no moment. It was evident to Burgo that he felt far from sure they were really alone, but he was doubtless unwilling to expose his wife to the ignominy of discovery, should it be a fact that she was playing the part of an unseen auditor.

Burgo did not feel himself at liberty to try the door as on the first night, unless requested by his uncle to do so; but, although since then his eyes had glanced at it times innumerable, after that first occasion he had seen nothing to lead him to suppose that it was otherwise than closely shut; still, so long as it remained half hidden by the portière, a doubt would inevitably make itself felt.

All this time Lady Clinton's amiability and graciousness towards Burgo had been eclipsed by no faintest shadow of change. She treated him as if he were there of right as a member of the family. That first interview between them might have had no existence, save in Burgo's imagination, for any hint or allusion to it which escaped her lips. Did she wish him to forget it? Was it her desire that he should consider the breach between his uncle and himself not merely as healed, but as if it had never arisen? It certainly seemed so, and under ordinary circumstances, no other conclusion would have been logically possible. But in this case the circumstances were not ordinary ones. There was his uncle's mysterious illness to be taken into account, and, above all, certain things which his uncle had said to him--phrases, as it seemed to him, charged with a terrible meaning. These were facts which it was impossible to ignore, or to put lightly aside as of little import. Then, again, some still, small, inner voice seemed to warn him against Lady Clinton. He mistrusted her instinctively, and in such cases he knew how useless it is to ask the why and the wherefore. Our likes and dislikes have their springs deeper than we can plumb, and constitute a part of that mysterious Ego which each of us calls Myself--which is at once our slave and our master, and which, even at the end of the longest life, we have only partially learned to know.