Such a history did not suggest inaccessible beauty, and there was a touch of originality in it which awakened Sefton’s interest. The very name of Venice is a sound of enchantment for some minds; and Sefton, although a man of the world, was not without romantic yearnings. He was always glad to escape from beaten tracks.
He had been troubled and perplexed from the night of Signora Vivanti’s début by the conviction that he had seen that brilliant face before, and by the inability to fix the when or the where. Yes, that vivid countenance was decidedly familiar. It was the individual and not the type which he knew—but where and when—where and when? The brain did its work in the usual unconscious way, and one night, sitting lazily in his stall, dreamily watching the scene, and the actress whose image seemed to fill the stage to the exclusion of all other figures, the memory of a past rencontre flashed suddenly upon the dreamer. The face was the face of the foreign girl he had seen on the Chelsea Embankment, hanging upon Vansittart’s arm.
“By Heaven, there is something fatal in it,” thought Sefton. “Are the threads always to cross in the web of our lives? He has worsted me with Eve; and now—now am I to fall in love with his cast-off mistress?”
He had been quick to make inferences from that little scene on the Embankment; the girl hanging on Vansittart’s arm, looking up at him pleadingly, passionately. What could such a situation mean but a love affair of the most serious kind?
Had there been any doubt in Sefton’s mind as to the nature of the intrigue, Vansittart’s evident embarrassment would have settled the question. Mr. Sefton was the kind of man who always thinks worst about everybody, and prejudice had predisposed him to think badly of Eve’s admirer.
This idea of the singer’s probable relations with Vansittart produced a strong revulsion of feeling. An element of scorn was now mixed with his admiration of the lovely Venetian. Until now he had approached her with deference, sending her a bouquet every evening, with his card, but making no other advance. But the day after his discovery he sent her a diamond bracelet, and asked with easy assurance to be allowed to call upon her.
The bracelet was returned to him, with a stately letter signed Zinco; a letter wherein the cello player begged that his pupil might be spared the annoyance of gifts, which she could but consider as insults in disguise.
This refusal stimulated Sefton to renewed ardour. He forgot everything except the rebuff, which had taken him by surprise. He put the bracelet in a drawer of his writing-table, and turned the key upon it with a smile.
“She will be wiser by-and-by,” he said to himself.
He went back to the country next day, and tried to forget Signora Vivanti’s eyes, and the thrilling sweetness of her voice, tried to banish that seductive image altogether from his mind, while he devoted himself to the conquest of an untried hunter, a fine bay mare, whose pace was better than her manners, and who showed the vulgar strain in her pedigree very much as Signora Vivanti showed her peasant ancestry.
The season was not a good one, and after a couple of days with the hounds a hard frost set in, and the bay mare’s evolutions were confined to the straw-yard, where she might walk on her hind legs to her heart’s content; while her owner had nothing to do but brood upon the image that had taken possession of his fancy. It was only when he found himself amidst the tranquil surroundings of his country seat that he knew the strength of his infatuation for the Venetian singer.
He looked back upon his life as he strolled round the billiard table, cue in hand, trying a shot now and then yawningly, as the snow came softly down outside the Tudor windows, and gradually clouded and muffled garden and park. He looked back upon his life, wondering whether he had done the best for himself, starting from such an advantageous standpoint; whether, in his own careless phraseology, he had got change for his shilling.
He had always had plenty of money; he had always been his own master; he had always studied his own pleasure; and yet there had been burdens. His first love affair had turned out badly; so badly that there were people in Sussex who still gave him the cold shoulder on account of that old story. He had admired a good many women since he left Eton; but he had never seen the woman for whom he cared to sacrifice his liberty, for whose sake he could bind himself for all his life to come. He knew himself well enough to know that all his passions were short-lived, and that, however deeply he might be in love today, satiety might come tomorrow.
He was ambitious, and he meant to marry a woman who could bring him increase of fortune and social status. He was not to be drifted into matrimony by the caprice of the hour.
