“Won’t you wait and see my mother?” asked Florida, with her awkward self-constraint again upon her.
“No, thanks,” said Ferris, gloomily. “I haven’t time. I just dropped in for a moment, to blast an innocent man’s reputation, and destroy a young lady’s peace of mind.”
“Then you needn’t go, yet,” answered Florida, coldly, “for you haven’t succeeded.”
“Well, I’ve done my worst,” returned Ferris, drawing the bolt.
He went away, hanging his head in amazement and disgust at himself for his clumsiness and bad taste. It seemed to him a contemptible part, first to embarrass them with Don Ippolito’s acquaintance, if it was an embarrassment, and then try to sneak out of his responsibility by these tardy cautions; and if it was not going to be an embarrassment, it was folly to have approached the matter at all.
What had he wanted to do, and with what motive? He hardly knew. As he battled the ground over and over again, nothing comforted him save the thought that, bad as it was to have spoken to Miss Vervain, it must have been infinitely worse to speak to her mother.
VIII.
It was late before Ferris forgot his chagrin in sleep, and when he woke the next morning, the sun was making the solid green blinds at his window odorous of their native pine woods with its heat, and thrusting a golden spear at the heart of Don Ippolito’s effigy where he had left it on the easel.
Marina brought a letter with his coffee. The letter was from Mrs. Vervain, and it entreated him to come to lunch at twelve, and then join them on an excursion, of which they had all often talked, up the Canal of the Brenta. “Don Ippolito has got his permission—think of his not being able to go to the mainland without the Patriarch’s leave! and can go with us to-day. So I try to make this hasty arrangement. You must come—it all depends upon you.”