"You will never be serious, Mr. Torrens." She felt too heartsick to answer his laugh. She never moved her hand, watching greedily for a sign that never came. There was Irene coming back, having disposed of her ladyship! "I must go," said Gwen, "because of mamma. She's the Dream Witch, I suppose. I must go. Good-bye, Mr. Torrens! But I can leave my name—Gwen or Gwendolen. Choose which you prefer." She had to contrive a laugh, but it caught in her throat.
"Gwen, I think." It was such a luxury to call her by her name, holding her hand in his—for, the moment she spoke "good-bye," his hand had come to meet hers like a shot—that he seemed in no hurry to relinquish it. Nor did she seem concerned to have it back at the cost of dragging. "Did you ever live abroad?" said he. "In Italy they always kiss hands—it's rather rude not to. Let's pretend it's Italy."
She was not offended; might have been pleased, in fact—for Gwen was no precisian, no drawer of hard-and-fast lines in flirtation—if it had not been for the black cloud that in the last few minutes had been stifling her heart. As it was, Adrian's trivial presumption counted for nothing, unless, indeed, it was as the resolution of a difficulty. It was good so far. Even so two pugilists are glad of a way out of a close grip sometimes. It ended a handshake neither could withdraw from gracefully. "Good-bye, Mr. Torrens," she said, and contrived another laugh. "I'll come again to talk about the poetry. I must go now." She passed Irene, coming in from a moment's speech with the nurse outside, with a hurried farewell, and ran on to her mother's room breathless.
CHAPTER XIX
GWEN'S PESSIMISM. IT WAS ALL OUR FAULT! HOW SHE KNEW THAT ADRIAN TORRENS WAS FIANCE, AND HOW HER MOTHER TOOK KINDLY TO THE IDEA. PEOPLE ONLY KNOW WHAT THE WILL OF GOD IS, NOT WHAT IT ISN'T. BUT ADRIAN TORRENS DID NOT COME TO TABLE. LONELINESS, AND NIGHT—ALL BUT SLEEPLESS. WANT OF COMMON SENSE. THE FATE OF A FEATHER. COUNTING A THOUSAND. LOOKING MATTERS CALMLY IN THE FACE. A GREAT DECISION, AND WHAT GWEN SAW IN A MIRROR
Lady Ancester, not sorry to get away from a position which involved the consideration that she was unreasonable in feeling reluctance to remain in it, endeavoured on arriving in her own room to congratulate herself on her own share in an embarrassing interview.
She had got through it very well certainly, but not so well as she had been led to expect by her meeting with his father three weeks since. She had had her misgivings before that interview, and had been pleasantly surprised to find how thoroughly the inexorable present had ridden rough-shod over the half-forgotten past. Their old identities had vanished, and it was possible to be civil and courteous, and that sort of thing; even to send messages of sympathy, quite in earnest, to the lady who up till now had been little more than the Miss Abercrombie Hamilton Torrens married. Being thus set at ease about what seemed rocks of embarrassment ahead, in the father's case, Lady Ancester had looked forward with perfect equanimity to making the acquaintance of the son—had, in fact, only connected him in her mind with this deplorable accident, which, however, she quite understood to be going to be a thing of the past. All in good time. Her equanimity had, however, been disturbed by the young man's inherited manner, which his father had so completely lost; above all things by his rapid nonsense, one of his father's leading characteristics in youth. She condemned it as more nonsensical, which probably only meant that she herself was older. But the manner—the manner of it! How it brought back Clarges Street and her mother, and the family earthquake over her resolution to marry a young Dragoon, with three good lives between him and his inheritance! She was taken aback to find herself still so sensitive about that old story.
She had not succeeded in ridding herself of her disquieting memories when her daughter followed her, choking back tense excitement until she had fairly closed the door behind her. Then her words came with a rush, for all that she kept her voice in check to say them.
"He cannot see, mamma—he cannot see at all! He is dead stone-blind—for life—for life! And we have done it—we have done it!" Then she broke down utterly, throwing herself on a sofa to hide in its cushions the torrent of tears she could no longer keep back. "We have done it—we have done it!" she kept on crying. "We have ruined his life, and the guilt is ours—ours—all!"