The Spaldings went one way from the Florence station, and the Rowleys another. The American Minister had returned to the city some days previously—drawn there nominally by pleas of business, but, in truth, by the necessities of the wedding breakfast—and he met them at the station. “Has Mr. Glascock come back?” Nora was the first to ask. Yes;—he had come. He had been in the city since two o’clock, and had been up at the American Minister’s house for half a minute. “And has he brought the child?” asked Caroline, relieved of doubt on her own account. Mr. Spalding did not know;—indeed, he had not interested himself quite so intently about Mrs. Trevelyan’s little boy, as had all those who had just returned from the Baths. Mr. Glascock had said nothing to him about the child, and he had not quite understood why such a man should have made a journey to Siena, leaving his sweetheart behind him, just on the eve of his marriage. He hurried his women-kind into their carriage, and they were driven away; and then Sir Marmaduke was driven away with his women-kind. Caroline Spalding had perhaps thought that Mr. Glascock might have been there to meet her.
LXXXVI
Mr. Glascock as Nurse
A message had been sent by the wires to Trevelyan, to let him know that Mr. Glascock was himself coming for the boy. Whether such message would or would not be sent out to Casalunga Mr. Glascock had been quite ignorant;—but it could, at any rate, do no harm. He did feel it hard as in this hot weather he made the journey, first to Florence, and then on to Siena. What was he to the Rowleys, or to Trevelyan himself, that such a job of work should fall to his lot at such a period of his life? He had been very much in love with Nora, no doubt; but, luckily for him, as he thought, Nora had refused him. As for Trevelyan—Trevelyan had never been his friend. As for Sir Marmaduke—Sir Marmaduke was nothing to him. He was almost angry even with Mrs. Trevelyan as he arrived tired, heated, and very dusty, at Siena. It was his purpose to sleep at Siena that night, and to go out to Casalunga early the next morning. If the telegram had not been forwarded, he would send a message on that evening. On inquiry, however, he found that the message had been sent, and that the paper had been put into the Signore’s own hand by the Sienese messenger. Then he got into some discourse with the landlord about the strange gentleman at Casalunga. Trevelyan was beginning to become the subject of gossip in the town, and people were saying that the stranger was very strange indeed. The landlord thought that if the Signore had any friends at all, it would be well that such friends should come and look after him. Mr. Glascock asked if Mr. Trevelyan was ill. It was not only that the Signore was out of health—so the landlord heard—but that he was also somewhat—And then the landlord touched his head. He eat nothing, and went nowhere, and spoke to no one; and the people at the hospital to which Casalunga belonged were beginning to be uneasy about their tenant. Perhaps Mr. Glascock had come to take him away. Mr. Glascock explained that he had not come to take Mr. Trevelyan away—but only to take away a little boy that was with him. For this reason he was travelling with a maidservant—a fact for which Mr. Glascock clearly thought it necessary that he should give an intelligible and credible explanation. The landlord seemed to think that the people at the hospital would have been much rejoiced had Mr. Glascock intended to take Mr. Trevelyan away also.
He started after a very early breakfast, and found himself walking up over the stone ridges to the house between nine and ten in the morning. He himself had sat beside the driver and had put the maid inside the carriage. He had not deemed it wise to take an undivided charge of the boy even from Casalunga to Siena. At the door of
