“Be yourself. Lisa—bright, candid, and original. Your transparent nature will always pass for genius, from its rarity. And now goodbye. I must not come here any more. I came today because I felt I had a duty to do as your friend, but my wife would not like to hear of me as your visitor. She and I love each other too well not to be easily jealous.”
“It has been sweet to see you,” answered Lisa, gravely, “but I will not ask you to come again. Yes, yes,” she added musingly. “I understand! Love is always jealous.”
She gave him her hand, and bade him goodbye, with a gentle resignation which touched him more deeply than her passionate moods had ever done. The beautiful dark eyes looked into his, and said, “I love you still—shall love you always,” in language which a man need not be a coxcomb to understand. And so they parted, each believing that this might be a final parting.
Vansittart looked at his watch as he ran downstairs. It was nearly six o’clock. At the bottom of the last flight he met Sefton, who was entering with an easy air and self-satisfied smile, which changed to a frown as he recognized Lisa’s departing visitor.
“I have just come from Charles Street,” he said, recovering himself instantly, “where I expected to find you. But I dare say you have been more amused here than you would have been there. The narrow footpaths and shady woodland walks are generally pleasanter than the broad high-road.”
“Is that a truism, or an allegory? If the latter, it bears no application to my visit here.”
“Doesn’t it really? You don’t mean that you, Mrs. Vansittart’s husband, call upon Signora Vivanti in the beaten way of friendship?”
“In friendship, at least, if not in the beaten way; but whatever my motive in visiting that lady, I don’t admit your right to question me about it; or”—with a laugh—“to resort to allegory. Good day to you.”
He ran down the steps to his hansom, and Sefton went slowly up the three flights of stone stairs which led to Signora Vivanti’s bower, brooding angrily upon his encounter with Vansittart. He had never been able to extort any admissions from Lisa about this man. She had been secret as the grave; yet he was convinced that her past history was the history of an intrigue with Vansittart; and after that effusive greeting from the boat, and remembering the expression of her face more than two years ago, as she hung upon his arm on the Embankment, he was convinced that she loved him still, and that this passion was the cause of her coldness to him, Wilfred Sefton.
XXV
“And Every Gentle Passion Sick to Death”
Although in his leisurely ascent to the third story Mr. Sefton had time to recover the appearance of serenity, he was by no means master of himself as he waited for Lisa’s door to be opened. Still less was he master of himself when the door was opened by Lisa herself, looking flushed and excited, her eyes brilliant with newly shed tears.
He went through the little vestibule and into the sunlit drawing-room with the air of a man who had the right to enter unbidden, and flung himself sullenly into one of Lisa’s basket chairs, which creaked under his weight.
“It is very late,” said Lisa, evidently fluttered and uneasy. “I ought to be starting for the theatre.”
“You needn’t hurry,” Sefton answered coolly. “It isn’t six o’clock; and you don’t come on the stage till half-past eight. You’d better sit down and take things easily. You don’t look much like going into the street, with that crying face. You’d better get over your scene with your lover before you go out of doors.”
“I have no lover,” Lisa answered indignantly, tossing up her head.
In Sefton’s eyes she had never looked lovelier than at that moment; every feature instinct with passion; red lips and delicate nostrils faintly quivering; a rich carmine flushing the pale olive of her cheeks; the great dark eyes brightened by tears; the haughty pose of the head giving something of aristocracy to that uncultured beauty. He loved her with a passion which every fresh indication of her cold indifference had stimulated to increasing warmth. He loved her first because she was lovely and fascinating in her childish simplicity. He loved her next and best because she, who by every common rule of life should have been so easily won, had proved invincible. The greatest princess in the land—the woman most hedged round by conventionalities—could not have held herself more aloof than Lisa had done, even while condescending to accept his friendship. She had held herself aloof; and she had shown him that she was not afraid of him.
He saw her now under a new aspect, saw her deeply moved, with all the potentialities of tragedy in those tremulous lips and shining eyes. He saw now in all its reality the passion which informed her acting, and gave pathetic reality to all that there was of sentiment in her role. He saw the moving spring which had made it so easy for her to represent in all its touching details the passion of hopeless love.
“You have no lover? You are an audacious woman to make that assertion to me when I have seen you in his company, after an interval of years, and when each time I saw you, your face has been a declaration of love. I met the man on your staircase just now; and I can read the history of his visit in your eyes. Do you mean to tell
