“I have no doubt for myself—no,” she said, as if there had been no interruption.
“Then we need have no anxiety in meeting your mother,” said Colville, with a light sigh, after a moment’s pause. “What makes you think she will be unfavourable?”
“I don’t think that; but I thought—I didn’t know but—”
“What?”
“Nothing, now.” Her lips were quivering; he could see her struggle for self-control, but he could not see it unmoved.
“Poor child!” he said, putting out his hand toward her.
“Don’t take my hand; they’re all looking,” she begged.
He forbore, and they remained silent and motionless a little while, before she had recovered herself sufficiently to speak again.
“Then we are promised to each other, whatever happens,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And we will never speak of this again. But there is one thing. Did Mrs. Bowen ask you to tell Mr. Morton of our engagement?”
“She said that I ought to do so.”
“And did you say you would?”
“I don’t know. But I suppose I ought to tell him.”
“I don’t wish you to!” cried the girl.
“You don’t wish me to tell him?”
“No; I will not have it!”
“Oh, very well; it’s much easier not. But it seems to me that it’s only fair to him.”
“Did you think of that yourself?” she demanded fiercely.
“No,” returned Colville, with sad self-recognition. “I’m afraid I’m not apt to think of the comforts and rights of other people. It was Mrs. Bowen who thought of it.”
“I knew it!”
“But I must confess that I agreed with her, though I would have preferred to postpone it till we heard from your family.” He was thoughtfully silent a moment; then he said, “But if their decision is to have no weight with us, I think he ought to be told at once.”
“Do you think that I am flirting with him?”
“Imogene!” exclaimed Colville reproachfully.
“That’s what you imply; that’s what she implies.”
“You’re very unjust to Mrs. Bowen, Imogene.”
“Oh, you always defend her! It isn’t the first time you’ve told me I was unjust to her.”
“I don’t mean that you are willingly unjust, or could be so, to any living creature, least of all to her. But I—we—owe her so much; she has been so patient.”
“What do we owe her? How has she been patient?”
“She has overcome her dislike to me.”
“Oh, indeed!”
“And—and I feel under obligation to her for—in a thousand little ways; and I should be glad to feel that we were acting with her approval; I should like to please her.”
“You wish to tell Mr. Morton?”
“I think I ought.”
“To please Mrs. Bowen! Tell him, then! You always cared more to please her than me. Perhaps you stayed in Florence to please her!”
She rose and ran down the broken seats and ruined steps so recklessly and yet so sure-footedly that it seemed more like a flight than a pace to the place where Mrs. Bowen and Mr. Morton were talking together.
Colville followed as he could, slowly and with a heavy heart. A good thing develops itself in infinite and unexpected shapes of good; a bad thing into manifold and astounding evils. This mistake was whirling away beyond his recall in hopeless mazes of error. He saw this generous young spirit betrayed by it to ignoble and unworthy excess, and he knew that he and not she was to blame.
He was helpless to approach her, to speak with her, to set her right, great as the need of that was, and he could see that she avoided him. But their relations remained outwardly undisturbed. The artists brought their sketches for inspection and comment, and, without speaking to each other, he and Imogene discussed them with the rest.
When they started homeward the painters said they were coming a little way with them for a send-off, and then going back to spend the night in Fiesole. They walked beside the carriage, talking with Mrs. Bowen and Imogene, who had taken their places, with Effie between them, on the back seat; and when they took their leave, Colville and the young clergyman, who had politely walked with them, continued on foot a little further, till they came to the place where the highway to Florence divided into the new road and the old. At this point it steeply overtops the fields on one side, which is shored up by a wall some ten or twelve feet deep; and here round a sharp turn of the hill on the other side came a peasant driving a herd of the black pigs of the country.
Mrs. Bowen’s horses were, perhaps, pampered beyond the habitual resignation of Florentine horses to all manner of natural phenomena; they reared at sight of the sable crew, and backing violently uphill, set the carriage across the road, with its hind wheels a few feet from the brink of the wall. The coachman sprang from his seat, the ladies and the child remained in theirs as if paralysed.
Colville ran forward to the side of the carriage. “Jump, Mrs. Bowen! jump, Effie! Imogene—”
The mother and the little one obeyed. He caught them in his arms and set them down. The girl sat still, staring at him with reproachful, with disdainful eyes.
He leaped forward to drag her out; she shrank away, and then he flew to help the coachman, who had the maddened horses by the bit.
“Let go!” he heard the young clergyman calling to him; “she’s safe!” He caught a glimpse of Imogene, whom Mr. Morton had pulled from the other side of the carriage. He struggled to free his wrist from the curb-bit chain of the horse, through which he had plunged it in his attempt to seize the bridle. The wheels of the carriage went over the wall; he felt himself whirled into the air, and then swung ruining down into the writhing and crashing heap at the bottom of the wall.
XXI
When Colville came to himself his first sensation was delight in the softness and smoothness of the turf on which he lay. Then the strange colour
