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 ALAS! 
 
 PART I. 
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "If you will allow me, I shall have the 
 pleasure of reading aloud to you some pas- 
 sages from 4 Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' by 
 Charles Dickens. I do not know much 
 about the book myself, as I have never 
 read it. I dare say that you know more 
 about it than I do ; but I am given to 
 understand " (with a glance at the page 
 before him) "that Mrs. Lirriper was a 
 lodging-house-keeper, that she kept lodg- 
 ings in London. She was a very good 
 sort of woman, I believe " (another hasty 
 glance), " but she sometimes had trouble 
 with her servants. I am told that servants 
 are troublesome sometimes " (a slight ner- 
 vous laugh, the more nervous because it 
 
 i — 2
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 does not seem to be followed by any echo 
 from the audience). "If you will allow 
 me then, as I say, and if you think it will 
 amuse you, I will read you a little of what 
 she says about these troubles." 
 
 The foregoing remarks are uttered in a 
 
 loud, shy, dogged voice by James Bur- 
 
 goyne to the " Oxford Women's Provident 
 
 Association." His voice is loud because, 
 
 being quite unused to public reading, he 
 
 does not know how to modulate it ; it is 
 
 shy from the same cause of unaccustomed- 
 
 ness ; it is dogged because he is very much 
 
 displeased with his present occupation, and 
 
 has not been successful in concealing that 
 
 displeasure. When a man runs down to 
 
 Oxford for a couple of nights, to see how 
 
 the six years that have passed since he 
 
 turned his undergraduate back upon the 
 
 old place have treated her — runs down to a 
 
 college chum unseen for the same six years 
 
 — this is certainly not the way in which he 
 
 expects to spend one of his two evenings. 
 
 " I hope you will not mind, Jim " — 
 
 ominous phrase — the college friend has
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 said ; " but I am afraid we shall have to 
 turn out for half an hour after dinner. It 
 is rather a nuisance, particularly as it is 
 such a wet night ; but the fact is, I have 
 promised to read to the ' Oxford Women's 
 Provident Association.' Ah, by-the-bye, 
 that is new since you were here — we had 
 no Provident Women in your day !" 
 
 11 On the other hand, we had a great 
 many improvident men," returns Jim 
 dryly. 
 
 "Well, the fact is, my wife is on the 
 committee, and a good deal interested in 
 it, and we give them a sort of entertain- 
 ment once a month through the winter 
 terms — tea and buns, that kind of thing, 
 sixpence a head ; they enjoy it far more 
 than if we gave it them for nothing ; and 
 after tea we get people to recite and read 
 and sing to them. I am sure I wish them 
 joy of my reading to-night, for I do not 
 see how I am to make myself audible ; I 
 am as hoarse as a crow." 
 
 44 I know those Oxford colds of old," 
 returns Burgoyne, with that temperate
 
 ALAS/ 
 
 compassion in his voice which we accord 
 to our neighbours' minor diseases. He is 
 sorry that his friend has a cold ; but he 
 little knows how much sorrier he will be 
 in the course of the next hour as he adds : 
 " Do not distress yourself about me; I shall 
 be quite happy in your den with a book 
 and a cigarette. Mrs. Brown does not 
 object, does she ? And I dare say you will 
 not be very long away." 
 
 As he speaks he realizes, with a sort of 
 pang — the pang we pay sometimes to our 
 dead pasts — that, though it is only three 
 hours since he was reunited to his once 
 inseparable Brown, he is already looking 
 forward with relief to the prospect of an 
 hour's freedom from his society — so terribly 
 far apart is it possible to grow in six years. 
 But, before his half-fledged thought has 
 had time to do more than traverse his 
 brain, Brown has broken into it with the 
 eager remonstrances of a mistaken species 
 of hospitality. 
 
 " Leave you behind ? Could not hear 
 of such a thing ! Of course you must come
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 too ! It will be a new experience for you ; 
 a wholesome change. Ha! ha! and we 
 can talk all the way there and back ; we 
 have had no talk worth speaking of 
 yet." 
 
 Again it Hashes across the other's mind, 
 with the same pensive regret as before, 
 that talk worth speaking of is for ever over 
 between them ; but, seeing that further 
 attempts at evasion will seriously hurt the 
 good-natured Brown, he acquiesces, with 
 as fair a grace as he may. 
 
 While putting on his own mackintosh, 
 he watches, with a subdued wonder, his 
 friend winding himself into a huge white 
 woollen comforter, and stepping into a pair 
 of goloshes (he had been rather a smart 
 undergraduate in his day), while outside 
 the opened hall door the rain is heard to 
 swish, and the wind to bellow. 
 
 44 Had not we better have a hansom?" 
 suggests Burgoyne, blinking, as the slant 
 gust sends two or three stinging drops 
 into his eyes. 
 
 44 A hansom! nonsense!" returns the
 
 ALAS/ 
 
 other, laughing, and with difficulty un- 
 furling an umbrella in the teeth of the 
 blast. "It is all very well for a bloated 
 bachelor like you ; but a man whose family 
 is increasing at the rate mine is cannot 
 afford himself such luxuries ; come along, 
 you are not sugar or salt." 
 
 Burgoyne feels that at this moment he 
 can at all events conscientiously disclaim 
 affinity with the first of the two. 
 
 It is indeed a wet night, wet as the one 
 immortalized by Browning in " Christmas 
 Eve and Easter Day ;" and who ever 
 brought a wet night and wet umbrellas 
 "wry and flapping" so piercingly home 
 to us as he ? The talk so cheerfully 
 promised by Burgoyne's sanguine friend 
 is rendered absolutely impossible by the 
 riot of the elements. It is a good step 
 from the suburban villa, which is the scene 
 of Brown's married joys, to the room in 
 the heart of the town where the Provident 
 Matrons hold their sabbat ; and by the 
 time that the two men have reached that 
 room there is, despite his mackintosh, little
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 of Burgoyne left dry except his speech. 
 They are under shelter at last, however, 
 have entered the building, added their 
 umbrellas to many other streaming wrecks 
 of whalebone huddled in a corner, and 
 exchanged the dark blustering drench for 
 a flare of gas, a reek of tea, and a sultry 
 stream of wet clothes and humanity. The 
 tea, indeed, is a thing of the past — all its 
 apparatus has been removed. The rows 
 of chairs are all set to face the platform, 
 and on those chairs the Provident Women 
 sit, smiling, if damp, with here and there 
 a little boy, evidently too wicked to be 
 left at home, comfortably wedged between 
 a couple of matronly figures. 
 
 The entertainment has already begun, 
 and an undergraduate— damp, like every- 
 one else — is singing, in a booming bass 
 voice, something of a vaguely boastful 
 nature about what he once did " In 
 Bilboa's Bay." Burgoyne has for the 
 moment lost sight of his chaperon, and 
 remains standing near the door, looking 
 upon the scene around him with an eye
 
 io ALAS! 
 
 from which philanthropy is all too crimi- 
 nally absent. About him are grouped a 
 few ladies and gentlemen — more of the 
 former than the latter — who are obviously 
 about to give their services, judging by 
 their rolls of music and the books in their 
 hands. His look passes over them indif- 
 ferently — he has no acquaintance among 
 them. He had never known many of the 
 Oxford householders, and there is no place 
 where a man becomes superannuated after 
 so short a lapse of years. 
 
 Here are new arrivals. He turns his 
 head mechanically as the opening door 
 reveals the advent of more umbrellaed 
 and mackintoshed waterfalls. Two men 
 and a lady. As his eye alights on the 
 woman, he does not start — we Anglo- 
 Saxons are not apt to make our slow 
 grave bodies the indexes of our emotions 
 — but he is conscious of an odd and 
 puzzling sensation. Where has he seen 
 that face before ? 
 
 " Bilboa's Bay" has come to an end 
 without his perceiving it. He is putting
 
 AMELIA. ii 
 
 his memory through her paces, trying to 
 find some niche in his three happy Oxford 
 years in which to place that strangely 
 known yet unknown figure. There is no 
 such niche. It is not an Oxford memory 
 at all. What is it then ? An earlier or 
 a later one? His eyebrows are drawn 
 together in the effort of recollection, 
 making him look, if possible, crosser than 
 before, when he is made aware of the 
 return of Brown by finding his arm 
 seized, and his friend's voice — a good 
 deal hoarser even than when they left 
 home — in his ear, " Jim, do you feel 
 inclined to do a very good-natured thing ?" 
 
 " Not in the least," replies Burgoyne 
 promptly; ''if anyone wishes to borrow 
 ,£5 from me, I should advise him to 
 choose a moment when I am drier about 
 the legs." 
 
 Burgoyne has very often stood up to 
 and over his knees in water for hours, 
 watching for ducks among whistling reeds 
 on winter mornings, and never thought 
 himself at all to be pitied ; but he is
 
 i2 ALAS! 
 
 thoroughly vexed now at his moist 
 trousers. Brown, however, is not so 
 easily rebuffed. 
 
 " I should be awfully obliged to you," 
 he says croakily ; "you would be laying 
 me under a very real obligation if you 
 would " He stops to cough. 
 
 "If I would what ?" returns the other 
 curtly, and looking apprehensively at a 
 bbok which Brown is expanding before 
 his eyes. 
 
 " If you would read instead of me." 
 
 " I !" 
 
 " Why, the fact is " — coughing noisily 
 again as if to show that there is no 
 imposition — "I suppose the fog must 
 have got down my throat ; but I find 
 I cannot speak above a whisper. I should 
 not be heard beyond the front row ; come, 
 old man, do a good-natured thing for once 
 in your life." 
 
 There is a pause ; Burgoyne is not 
 very fond of being asked to do a good- 
 natured thing. He can do a big one 
 every now and then, but he is not par-
 
 AMELIA. 13 
 
 ticularly fond of being asked to do a 
 small one. 
 
 " Surely there must be many people 
 here much better suited for it than I am," 
 he says presently, looking uncomfortably 
 round in search of the little group of 
 booked and musicked persons whom he 
 had seen but now standing near him, but 
 it had melted. 
 
 " That is just what there are not," re- 
 joins Brown, pressing his point with the 
 more eagerness, as he thinks he sees 
 signs of yielding ; " we are very short of 
 hands to-night, and my wife has just 
 heard that the girl upon whom she was 
 counting for a couple of songs is in bed 
 with influenza." 
 
 " Happy girl ! I wish I too was in bed 
 with influenza," says Jim sardonically, for 
 he sees his fate about to overtake him. 
 
 And so it comes to pass that, five 
 minutes later, as described at the opening 
 of this chapter, he is seated on the plat- 
 form with " Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings " 
 before him, rows of Provident Matrons'
 
 i 4 ALAS! 
 
 eyes fastened expectantly upon him, and 
 horrid qualms of strange shyness racing 
 over him. 
 
 Brown has indicated by a dog's-ear the 
 page at which he is to begin ; so he is 
 spared indecision on this head. But has 
 Brown indicated the page at which he is 
 to stop ? He is gnawed by a keen anxiety 
 as to this point all through his perform- 
 ance. It is hot upon the platform, the 
 smell of tea potent, and the naked gas- 
 jets close above his head throw an ugly 
 yellow glare upon his book. 
 
 Having offered his prefatory observa- 
 tions in the manner I have indicated, he 
 rushes in medias res. " Girls, as I was 
 beginning to remark, are one of your first 
 and your lasting troubles, being like your 
 teeth, which begin with convulsions, and 
 never cease tormenting you from the time 
 you cut them till they cut you, and then 
 you do not want to part with them, which 
 seems hard, but we must all succumb, or 
 buy artificial." (Do his ears deceive him ? 
 Is there already a slight titter ? Have the
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 simile of the convulsions and the necessity 
 for a rdtelier already struck a chord in the 
 matrons' breasts ?) " And, even where 
 you get a will, nine times out of ten you 
 get a dirty face with it, and naturally 
 lodgers do not like good society to be 
 shown in with a smear of black across the 
 nose, or a smudgy eyebrow!" (Is he 
 managing his voice aright ? Is he mum- 
 bling, or is he bellowing ? He rather 
 inclines to a suspicion of the latter. Why 
 did not they laugh at the " smudgy eye- 
 brow " ? They ought to have done so, 
 and he had paused to give them the op- 
 portunity. Perhaps it is among them too 
 familiar a phenomenon to provoke mirth.) 
 " Where they pick the black up is a 
 mystery I cannot solve, as in the case of 
 the willingest girl that ever came into a 
 house, half-starved, poor thing ; a girl so 
 willing that I called her ' Willing Sophy ;' 
 down upon her knees scrubbing early and 
 late, and ever cheerful, but always with a 
 black face. And I says to Sophy, ' Now, 
 Sophy, my good girl, have a regular day
 
 16 ALAS! 
 
 for your stoves, and do not brush your 
 hair with the bottoms of the saucepans, 
 and do not meddle with the snuffs of the 
 candles, and it stands to reason that it 
 cannot be." (Ah ! what welcome sound is 
 this? "Willing Sophy" has produced an 
 undoubted giggle, which Burgoyne hears 
 spreading and widening through the room. 
 Heartened by this indication, he goes on 
 in a more emphatic and hilarious voice :) 
 " Yet there it was, and always on her 
 nose, which, turning up, and being broad 
 at the end, seemed to boast of it, and 
 caused warning from a steady gentleman, 
 an excellent lodger, with breakfast by the 
 week." 
 
 There can be no mistake about it now ; 
 the giggle has changed into a universal, 
 resonant laugh, which goes on swelling 
 and rising, until, in the final roar of ap- 
 probation which greets the concluding 
 paragraph, the reader's voice is drowned. 
 The matrons have all along been ready to 
 be amused ; it is only that, owing to the 
 gravity of his face and solemnity of his
 
 AMELIA. 17 
 
 manner, it was some time before they 
 recognised that his intention was comic. 
 As soon as they do so, they reward that 
 intention with more than adequate mirth. 
 Burgoyne has reached the second dog's- 
 ear, that dog's-ear which his eye has been 
 earnestly searching for throughout. His 
 task then is ended. He heaves a deep 
 sigh of relief, and, with a reflection that, 
 after all, he is glad he was obliging, is 
 preparing to shut the volume, when he 
 feels the inevitable Brown's hand on his 
 shoulder, and his husky voice in his ear. 
 
 " Capital ! you got on capitally ! Could 
 not be better ; but you will not mind 
 going on a little longer, will you ? You 
 have only read for ten minutes. I want 
 you to try something different this time 
 — a little pathos, for a change. I have 
 marked the page. Here !" 
 
 What is there to do but acquiesce ? 
 Burgoyne, complying, finds himself at 
 once in the middle of a melancholy tale 
 of a poor young woman left ruined and 
 deserted in Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, and 
 
 vol. 1. 2
 
 18 ALAS! 
 
 only rescued from suicide by the efforts of 
 that good lady, who, however, is unable 
 to save her from a tragic and premature 
 death. The reader has reached the point 
 at which Mrs. Lirriper has met the poor 
 creature on her way to the river. 
 
 " ' Mrs. Edson, I says, my dear, take 
 care ! However did you lose your way, 
 and stumble in a dangerous place like 
 this? No wonder you're lost, I'm sure." 
 (What is this sound ? Is it possible that 
 the giggle is rising again ? the giggle 
 which he was so glad to welcome a while 
 ago, but which is so disastrously out of 
 place here. He redoubles his efforts to 
 put an unmistakably serious and pathetic 
 tone into his voice.) " She was all in a 
 shiver, and she so continued till I laid 
 her on her own bed, and up to the early 
 morning she held me by the hand and 
 moaned, and moaned, ' Oh, wicked, wicked, 
 wicked ! ' " 
 
 What can the Provident Matrons be 
 made of? They are laughing unre- 
 strainedly. Too late Burgoyne realizes
 
 AMELIA. i 9 
 
 that he had not made it sufficiently clear 
 that his intention is no longer comic. 
 The idea of his being a funny man has so 
 firmly rooted itself in his hearers' minds, 
 that nothing can now dislodge it. Such 
 being the case, he feels that the best thing 
 he can do is to reach the end as quickly 
 as possible. He begins to read very fast, 
 which is taken for a new stroke of facetious- 
 ness, the result of which is that the last 
 sigh of the poor young would-be suicide 
 is drowned in a storm of hilarity even 
 heartier and more prolonged than that 
 which greeted " Willing Sophy's " smudged 
 nose. In much confusion, greatly abashed 
 by the honours so mistakenly heaped upon 
 him, Burgoyne hastily leaves the platform. 
 Twenty thousand Browns shall not keep 
 him there !
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Tell me now in what hidden way is 
 
 Lady Flora the lovely Roman ? 
 Where is Hipparchia, and where is Thais ? 
 
 Neither of them the fairer woman. 
 Where is Echo beheld of no one, 
 
 Only heard on river and mere ? 
 She whose beauty was more than human, 
 
 But where are the snows of yester-year ?" 
 
 tk There is no reason why we should not 
 go home now ; are you ready ?" cries 
 Brown, bustling up to his friend, who 
 has not waited for this question to make 
 straight, as the needle to the pole, for the 
 corner where the collected umbrellas stand 
 in their little area of lake. 
 
 Burgoyne would probably have laughed 
 at the unconscious irony of this inquiry if
 
 AMELIA. 21 
 
 he had heard it ; but he has not, his atten- 
 tion being otherwise directed. On the 
 same umbrella quest as himself, being 
 helped on with her mackintosh by one of 
 the two men who had accompanied her, a 
 pepper-and-salt-haired, sturdy gentleman 
 of an obviously unacademic cut, is the 
 lady whose face had flashed upon him 
 with that puzzling sense of unfamiliar 
 familiarity. Since they are now in close 
 proximity, and both employed alike in 
 struggling into their wraps, there is 
 nothing more natural than that she should 
 turn her eyes full upon him. They are 
 very fine eyes, though far from young 
 ones. Is it a trick of his imagination, or 
 does he see a look of half- recognition 
 dawn in them, such as must have been 
 born in his own when they first alighted 
 on her ? At all events, if there is such a 
 look of half-recognition in her eyes, she is 
 determined that it shall not have a chance 
 of becoming a whole one. Either he is 
 mistaken, and she has not recognised him, 
 or she is determined not to acknowledge
 
 22 ALAS/ 
 
 the acquaintance, for she looks away again 
 at once, nor does she throw another 
 glance in his direction. Indeed, it seems 
 to him that she hurries on her prepara- 
 tions with added speed, and walks out 
 into the night accompanied by her double 
 escort before him. 
 
 The weather has changed, and for the 
 better. The rollicking wind has lulled, 
 the pattering rain ceased. Between the 
 ragged, black cloud - sheets star - points 
 shine, and a shimmering moon shows her 
 wet face reflected in the puddles. Talk, 
 which had been impossible on their way 
 to the meeting, is not only possible but 
 easy now, and Brown is evidently greatly 
 inclined for it. Burgoyne, on the other 
 hand, had never felt more disinclined. It 
 is not so much that he is out of humour 
 with his tiresome friend, though he is that 
 too, as that his whole mind is centred on 
 making his memory give up the secret of 
 that face that has come back to him out 
 of some vague cavern of his past. 
 
 Who is the woman whom he knows,
 
 AMELIA. 2 3 
 
 and who knows him (for on reflection 
 he is sure that that look of hers was one 
 of half — of more than half — recognition), 
 and yet whose place in his history, whose 
 very name, he seeks so vainly ? She does 
 not belong to his Oxford days, as he has 
 already ascertained. He has learnt from 
 Brown that she does not belong to the 
 Oxford of to-day, being apparently a 
 stranger, and, with her husband, a visitor 
 
 to the Warden of College, in whose 
 
 company they had arrived. He explores 
 the succeeding years of his life. In vain ; 
 she has no place there ; in vain he dives 
 and plunges into the sea of his memory ; 
 he cannot fish up the pearl he seeks. 
 He must hark back to earlier days — his 
 school-time, the six months he spent in 
 Devonshire with a coach before he came 
 up to New. Ah ! he has it — he has it at 
 last ! Just as they have reached Brown's 
 door, while he is fumbling with his latch- 
 key for the keyhole, imprecating the moon 
 for withdrawing her shining at the very 
 instant he most needs her, Burgoyne has
 
 24 ALAS! 
 
 come up with the shy object of his chase. 
 It is conjured back into his mind by the 
 word Devonshire. 
 
 "I have it," he says to himself; "her 
 hair has turned white, that was why I did 
 not recognise her ; it used to be raven- 
 black. But it is she — of course it is she ! 
 To think of my not knowing her again ! 
 Of course it is Mrs. Le Marchant." 
 
 What a door into the distance that name 
 has opened ! — a door through which he 
 passes into a Devonshire garden, and 
 romps with rose-faced Devonshire children. 
 The very names of those children are 
 coming back to him. Tom and Charles, 
 those were the schoolboys ; Rose and 
 Miriam, and — Elizabeth. He recalls — 
 absurd trick of freakish memory — those 
 children's pets. Tom and Charles had 
 guinea-pigs ; Miriam had a white rat ; 
 Rose — what had Rose ? Rose must have 
 had something ; and Elizabeth had a kan- 
 garoo. Elizabeth's kangaroo was short- 
 lived, poor beast, and died about hay-time ; 
 the guinea-pigs and the white rat have
 
 AMELIA. 25 
 
 been dead too for ages now, of course. 
 And are Tom and Charles, and Rose and 
 Miriam, and bright Elizabeth dead also ? 
 Absurd ! Why should they be ? Nothing 
 more unlikely ! Why, it is only ten years 
 ago, after all. 
 
 He is roused from his meditations by 
 Brown's voice, to find himself in Brown's 
 study, where its owner is filling himself a 
 pipe, and festally offering him whisky-and- 
 water. But it is only an abstracted atten- 
 tion that Burgoyne lends, either to the 
 whisky or the whisky's master ; and his 
 answers are sometimes inattentively beside 
 the mark, to talk, which indeed is not 
 without some likeness to the boasted 
 exploits in Clement's Inn, and the affec- 
 tionate inquiries after Jane Nightwork, of 
 a more famous fool than he. 
 
 It is a relief to the guest when, earlier 
 than he had expected — a blessing he, no 
 doubt, owes to Mrs. Brown — his host 
 breaks up the seance, and he is free to 
 retire to his own room. At once he is 
 back in that Devonshire garden, he is
 
 26 ALAS! 
 
 there almost all night, between sleep and 
 wake. It is strange that persons and 
 circumstances banished from his memory 
 for ten long years should rush back with 
 such tyrannous insistence now. 
 
 Such silly recollected trifles crowd back 
 upon his mind. The day on which Tom 
 nearly choked himself by swallowing a 
 barley beard ; the day on which the 
 lop-eared rabbit littered — ah, rabbits of 
 course ! those were what Rose had ! — 
 the day on which Tom pushed Miriam 
 into the moat, and Elizabeth fell in, too, 
 in trying to fish her out. Elizabeth, the 
 eldest, the almost grown-up one, embar- 
 rassed by her newly lengthened petticoats, 
 so harassing at cricket, in races, in climb- 
 ing apple-trees. Elizabeth was sixteen ; 
 he remembers the fact, because her birth- 
 day had fallen two days before his own 
 departure. He had given her a gold 
 thimble set with turquoises upon the 
 occasion ; it was not a surprise, because 
 he recalls measuring her finger for the 
 size. He can see that small middle finger
 
 AMELIA. 27 
 
 now. Elizabeth must now be twenty-six 
 years of age. Where is she ? What is 
 she — maid, wife, or widow ? 
 
 And why has Mrs. Le Marchant's hair 
 turned snow-white? Had it been merely 
 gray he would not have complained, 
 though he would have deplored the loss 
 of the fine smooth inky sweep he 
 remembers. She has a fair right to be 
 gray ; Mrs. Le Marchant must be about 
 forty-six or forty-seven, bien sonnc. But 
 white, snow-white — the hue that one con- 
 nects with a venerable extremity of age. 
 Can it be bleached ? He has heard of 
 women bleaching their hair ; but not 
 Mrs. Le Marchant, not the Mrs. Le 
 Marchant he remembers. She would have 
 been as incapable of bleach as of dye. 
 Then why is she snow-haired? Because 
 Providence has so willed it is the obvious 
 answer. But somehow Burgoyne cannot 
 bring himself to believe that she has come 
 fairly by that white head. 
 
 With the morning light the might of 
 the Devonshire memories grows weaker ;
 
 28 ALAS/ 
 
 and, as the day advances, the Oxford 
 ones resume their sway. How can it 
 be otherwise, when all day long he strays 
 among the unaltered buildings in the 
 sweet sedate college gardens, down the 
 familiar " High," where, six years ago, he 
 could not take two steps without being 
 hailed by a jolly fresh voice, claiming 
 his company for some new pleasure ; but 
 where now he walks ungreeted, where 
 the smooth - faced boys he meets, and 
 who strike him as so much more boyish 
 than his own contemporaries had done, 
 pass him by indifferently, unknown to 
 the whole two thousand as he is. He 
 feels a sort of irrational anger with 
 them for not recognising him, though 
 they have never seen him before. 
 
 Yes, there is no place where a man is 
 so quickly superannuated as in Oxford. 
 He is saying this to himself all day, is 
 saying it still as he strolls in the after- 
 noon down Mesopotamia, to fill up the 
 time before the hour for college chapel. 
 Yes, there is no place where men so
 
 AMELIA. 29 
 
 soon turn into ghosts. He has been 
 knocking up against them all day at 
 every street - corner ; they have looked 
 out at him from every gray window in 
 the Quad at New — jovial, athletic young 
 ghosts, so much painfuller to meet than 
 rusty, century-worn old ones. They are 
 rather less plentiful in Mesopotamia than 
 elsewhere ; perhaps, because in his day, 
 as now, Mesopotamia on Sundays was 
 given over to the mechanic and the 
 perambulator. Oh, that Heaven would 
 put it into the head of some Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer to lay a swingeing tax 
 upon that all-accursed vehicle ! But not 
 even mechanic and perambulator can 
 hinder Mesopotamia from being fair on 
 a fine February day, when the beautiful 
 floods are out, the floods that the Thames 
 Conservators and the Oxford authorities 
 have combined to put down, as they 
 have most other beautiful things within 
 their reach. But they have not yet 
 quite succeeded. To-day, for instance, 
 the floods are out in might.
 
 3 o ALAS/ 
 
 Burgoyne is pacing along a brown walk, 
 like a raised causeway, with a sheet of 
 white water on either hand, rolling strong 
 ripples to the bank. Gnarled willows 
 stand islanded in the coldly argent water. 
 A blackbird is flying out of the bushes, 
 with a surprised look at finding himself 
 turned into a sea-bird. No sun ; an even 
 sweep of dull silver to right and left. No 
 sun ; and yet as he looks, after days of 
 rain, the "grand de'corateur" as someone 
 happily called him, rides out in royalty on 
 a cleared sky-field, turning the whole 
 drenched country into mother-of-pearl — a 
 sheet of opal stretched across the drowned 
 meadows ; the distance opal too, a delicate, 
 dainty, evanescent loveliness snatched from 
 the ugly brown jaws of winter. 
 
 Burgoyne is leaning over the wooden 
 bridge beneath which, in its normal state, 
 the water of the lasher rushes down im- 
 petuously ; but is now raised to such a 
 height that it lies level, almost flush with 
 the planking. He is staring across the 
 iridescent water-plain to where, in the
 
 AMELIA. 31 
 
 poetic atmosphere of sun and mist, dome, 
 and schools, and soaring spires stand 
 etherealized. 
 
 " Dear old place !" he says, under his 
 breath, " everybody is dead ; and I am 
 dead ; and Brown is deader than anyone. 
 I am glad that you, at least, are still alive !" 
 
 Are these more ghosts coming round 
 the corner ? A man and a woman ghost 
 strolling along, and looking about them as 
 strangers look. When they are within a 
 pace or two of him the woman says some- 
 thing — something about the floods — to her 
 companion, and at the sound Burgoyne 
 starts. 
 
 " She did not speak last night ; if she 
 had spoken I should have known her at 
 once. She always had such a sweet 
 voice." 
 
 He raises his arms from the bridge-top, 
 and, turning, meets them face to face, eye 
 to eye, and in an instant he has seen that 
 both recognise him. At the same instant 
 he is aware of a simultaneous inclination 
 on the part of man and wife to avert their
 
 32 ALAS! 
 
 heads, and pass him without claiming his 
 acquaintance. Perhaps, if he had had time 
 to reflect, he would have allowed them to 
 do so, but the impulse of the moment for- 
 bids it. Why should they wish to cut 
 him ? What has he done to deserve it ? 
 Ten years ago they were his very good 
 friends, and he was the familiar comrade of 
 their children, the daily guest at their table. 
 What has the unavoidable lapse of those 
 years done to make him less fit for their 
 company at twenty-nine than he was at 
 nineteen ? There must be some miscon- 
 ception, which a moment will set right. 
 
 " I am afraid that you do not remember 
 me, Mrs. Le Marchant," he says, lifting his 
 hat. 
 
 This is not quite true, as he is perfectly 
 convinced that they are as much aware of 
 his identity as he is of theirs. But what 
 formula has a man to employ in such a 
 case ? They both look back at him with 
 a sort of irresolution. To his astonish- 
 ment, in their eyes is a velleity of flight, 
 but apparently she— women's minds moving
 
 AMELIA. 33 
 
 more quickly than men's — is the first to 
 realize that flight is out of the question. 
 
 11 I am sure that you have no intention 
 of cutting me," Jim goes on, with a smile, 
 seeing that she is apparently struggling 
 with a difficulty in utterance ; " at least, 
 you must be very much changed from 
 what you were ten years ago if you have. 
 My name is M 
 
 41 I know — I know !" she interrupts, 
 finding speech at last — speech low and 
 hurried. " I remember perfectly. You 
 are Mr. Burgoyne." 
 
 Her confusion — she used always to be 
 such a placid, even-mannered woman — is 
 so patent, born of whatever unaccountable 
 feeling it may be, that he now heartily 
 wishes he had let the poor woman pass 
 unmolested. But such repentance is too 
 late. He has arrested her ; she is stand- 
 ing on the gravel path before him, and 
 though he feels that her extraordinary 
 shyness — mauvaise honte, whatever it may 
 be — has infected himself, he must make 
 some further remark to her. Nothing 
 
 vol. i. 3
 
 34 ALAS! 
 
 better occurs to him than the obvious 
 one : 
 
 " It is a long time — it is ten years since 
 we met." 
 
 " Yes, ten years ; it must be quite ten 
 years," she assents, evidently making a 
 great effort to regain her composure. 
 
 She does not feign the slightest pleasure 
 in the meeting, and Burgoyne feels that 
 the one thought that occupies her mind is 
 how she can soonest end it. But his 
 roused curiosity, together with the dif- 
 ficulty of parting without further observa- 
 tion after having forced his presence upon 
 them, combine to prevent her succeeding. 
 
 "And how is the Moat?" he asks, re- 
 flecting that this, at least, is a safe ques- 
 tion ; a brick and mortar house, at all 
 events, cannot be dead. " How is Devon- 
 shire ?" 
 
 Apparently it is not so harmless a ques- 
 tion as he had imagined ; at least, Mrs. 
 Le Marchant is obviously quite incapable 
 of answering it. Her husband, for the 
 first time, comes to her rescue.
 
 AMELIA. 35 
 
 "The Moat is let," he says, in a dry 
 voice ; " we have left Devonshire a long 
 while — nine, nine and a half years 
 ago." 
 
 The Moat let! Judging by the light of 
 Burgoyne's recollections, it would have 
 seemed less surprising to him to hear that 
 Windsor Castle had been turned into a 
 Joint Stock Company Hotel. It is pro- 
 bably, then, some money trouble that has 
 turned Mrs. Le Marchant's hair white — 
 snow white, as he now sees it to be. But 
 no ; he rejects the explanation as insuf- 
 ficient. She is not the woman to have 
 taken a diminished income so much to 
 heart. 
 
 Good manners forbid him to ask, "Why 
 is the Moat let ?" so all that he says is, 
 " Nine and a half years ago ? Why, that 
 must have been very soon after I left 
 Devonshire.'' 
 
 He addresses his remark involuntarily 
 rather to the wife than the husband, but 
 she does not answer it. Her eyes are 
 fixed upon the bubbles sailing so fast
 
 36 ALAS/ 
 
 upon the swollen river, which is dis- 
 tinguishable only by its current from the 
 sameness of the surrounding water. A 
 lark — there is always a lark in Mesopo- 
 tamia — a tiny, strong-throated singer, that 
 never seems to have to stop to take 
 breath, fills up the silence, shouting some- 
 where out of sight among the black 
 clouds, in and out of which the uncertain 
 sun is plunging. Whether of a moneyed 
 nature or not, there is evidently some- 
 thing very unpleasant connected with their 
 leaving their native county and their im- 
 memorial home, so he had better get away 
 from the subject as fast as possible. 
 
 " Anyhow," he says, with a rather 
 nervous smile, " I hope that the world 
 has been treating you kindly — that things 
 have gone well with you since those dear 
 old days when you were so good to 
 me." 
 
 There is an instant's pause — perhaps 
 he would not have noticed it had not his 
 suspicions been already roused — before 
 the husband, again taking upon him the
 
 AMELIA. 37 
 
 task of replying, answers, with a sort of 
 laboured carelessness : 
 
 "Oh, yes, thanks; we do not complain. 
 It has not been a very rosy time for land- 
 lords lately, as you are aware." 
 
 " And you? 1 cries the wife, striking in 
 with a species of hurry in her voice — a 
 hurry due, as his instinct tells him, to the 
 fact of her fear of his entering into more 
 detailed inquiries. "And you? We must 
 not forget you. Have you been well, 
 flourishing, all this long time ? Do you 
 still live with your " 
 
 She stops abruptly. It is apparent that 
 she has entirely forgotten what was the 
 species of relation with whom he lived. 
 There is a little tinore of bitterness in his 
 heart, though not in his tone, as he sup- 
 plies the missing word "aunt." After all, 
 he had forgotten her name ; why should 
 not she forget his aunt ? 
 
 " With my aunt ? Well, I never exactly- 
 lived with her ; I made, and make my 
 headquarters there when I am in England, 
 which is not very often. I have been a
 
 38 ALAS/ 
 
 rolling stone ; I have rolled pretty well 
 round the world since we parted." 
 
 They do not care in the least where he 
 has rolled, nor how much nor how little 
 moss he has collected in the process. 
 They are only thinking how they can best 
 get rid of him. But the past is strong 
 upon him ; he cannot let them slide out 
 of his life again for another ten — twenty 
 years perhaps, without finding out from 
 them something about his five merry play 
 mates. His inquiry must needs be a vague 
 one. Who dares ask specifically after this 
 or that man, woman, or even child, when 
 ten years have rolled their tides between ? 
 
 "And you are all well?" he says, with 
 a certain wistfulness lurking in the in- 
 different banal phrase. "Dear me, what 
 a jolly party we used to be ! I suppose that 
 — that they are all out in the world now ?" 
 
 His eyes are fixed apprehensively upon 
 the mother of those young comrades, to 
 whom he thus cautiously alludes. Per- 
 haps, carefully as he has worded his 
 question, he may have touched some
 
 AMELIA. 39 
 
 terrible raw. Her face is turned aside, 
 presenting only its profile to him, but she 
 answers almost at once : 
 
 " Yes ; we are all scattered now. 
 Charlie is planting oranges in Florida — 
 he does not mind the heat ; you know T he 
 always said no weather could be too hot 
 for him ; and Tom has an ostrich farm in 
 Australia ; and Rose has been married 
 two years — she has a dear little baby ; 
 and Miriam is married too ; we have just 
 come down from her wedding." 
 
 " Miriam married !" repeats Burgoyne 
 in a tone of wonder. ' k Miriam with a 
 husband instead of a white rat !" 
 
 The mother laughs. It is the first time 
 that he has heard her laugh, and she used 
 to laugh so often. 
 
 " I think she likes the exchange." 
 
 There is another little pause, again filled 
 by the lark's crowding notes. There are 
 two words battering against the gate of 
 Burgoyne's lips for egress — two words 
 that he dares not utter. 
 
 "And Elizabeth?" She was the eldest.
 
 4o ALAS! 
 
 She would naturally have been mentioned 
 first ; but neither first nor last is there any 
 speech of her. She must, then, be dead — 
 dead long ago, too ; for there is no trace 
 of mourning in her parents' dress. Eliza- 
 beth is dead — bright Elizabeth, the beauty 
 and the pet ! Charles Lamb's tender lines 
 come pensively back to him — 
 
 " My sprightly neighbour, gone before 
 To that unknown and silent shore, 
 Shall we not meet as heretofore, 
 Some summer morning ?" 
 
 Is it only fancy that he sees in the eye 
 of Elizabeth's mother a dread lest he shall 
 ask tidings of her, as she says, hastily, and 
 with a smile, "Well, I am afraid we must 
 be going ; it has been very pleasant meet- 
 ing you again, but I am afraid that the 
 Warden will be expecting us"? 
 
 She adds to her parting hand-shake no 
 wish for a repetition of that meeting, and 
 he watches them down the Willow Walk 
 with a sort of sadness in his heart. 
 
 "Elizabeth is dead! Elizabeth is un- 
 doubtedly dead !" 

 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Do you know that Willy has been sent 
 down again ?" 
 
 Six weeks have passed since Burgoyne's 
 eye followed his quondam friends down 
 Mesopotamia, and he is not in Oxford 
 now. He left it, indeed, twenty - four 
 hours after the rencounter described ; left 
 it with something of a determination never 
 to revisit it. This, too, in spite of the 
 good Brown's vociferously reiterated in- 
 vitation to him to run down for another 
 Sunday, whenever he should feel inclined, 
 and which he accepted civilly, knowing 
 that he should never feel inclined. 
 
 At the present moment he is pacing 
 up and dow r n the still wintry, north-wind-
 
 42 ALAS/ 
 
 swept walks of a country-house garden 
 in Shropshire, in the company of a lady 
 whom he has known as long as he can 
 remember ; a lady who would have been 
 a friend of circumstance, even if she had 
 not been one of choice, since her home 
 has been in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of the only one he has ever had ; 
 a lady whose friendship he has tested by 
 letters on thin paper from New Guinea 
 and Central Africa all about himself; at 
 whose feet he has laid on his return more 
 heads, and skins, and claws than she has 
 well known what to do with ; whose hus- 
 band he thought a very good fellow, and 
 to whom he wrote a very nice letter on 
 that husband's death ; lastly, concerning 
 whose only child has been made the 
 communication that opens this chapter — 
 " Do you know that Willy has been 
 sent down again ?" 
 
 " I did not know it ; but I am very 
 sorry now that I do know." 
 
 " You need not be," returns she cheer- 
 fully ; "he does not mind it in the least ;
 
 AMELIA. 43 
 
 indeed, happily for him, most of his friends 
 have been sent down too." 
 
 "What has he been doing this time? 
 Putting the porter into the fountain ? or 
 screwing up the Dean ? or what other 
 playful little pleasantry ?" 
 
 " You need not speak in that nasty 
 sarcastic voice," says she, half laughing 
 and half vexed. " After all, you must 
 know that young men will be young 
 men, or, at least, if you do not know 
 it now, you must have known it once." 
 
 "If you take that tone to me," retorts 
 Burgoyne, smiling, " I shall have to souse 
 your gardener in your fountain, to prove 
 my juvenility ; but come, what has he 
 done ?" 
 
 "Absolutely nothing, as far as I can 
 make out," replies she, spreading out her 
 hands as if to emphasize the statement. 
 
 " Do you mean to say that the authori- 
 ties have sent him down de gaiete de coeur 
 without any provocation at all ?" asks Bur- 
 goyne, in a tone out of which he is unable 
 to keep a shade of incredulity.
 
 44 ALAS! 
 
 " I mean to say," replies she, nettled, 
 "that he had a few men to supper, and I 
 suppose they were making a little noise ; 
 did you ever in your day hear of an 
 undergraduate supper where there was 
 not noise ? However, in this case, from 
 what he tells me, Willy was taking posi- 
 tively no part in it." 
 
 " He was sitting in a corner, with 
 cotton-wool in his ears, reading Aristotle," 
 suggests Burgoyne teasingly. 
 
 "And it seems," continued she, not 
 deigning to notice the interruption, " that 
 the Proctor came in, and was very rude, 
 and Willy was told to go to the Dean 
 next morning, and he either was a little 
 late, or mistook the hour, or some trifle 
 of that sort ; and when he did go he was 
 told that he was sent down. However" 
 — with some triumph in her voice — " it did 
 not matter in the least — he did not mind ; 
 in fact, he was rather glad, as he has long 
 wanted to go to Italy in the spring." 
 
 "To Italy? Then perhaps we shall 
 meet ; I too am going to Italy."
 
 AMELIA. 45 
 
 "Are you?" she says. "Why should 
 you go to Italy? There is nothing to 
 kill there, is there ? Is not it at Naples 
 that they go out in full chasseur uni- 
 form to shoot tomtits ?" Which speech is 
 her revenge for his sarcasms upon her 
 son. > 
 
 But Burgoyne's face has taken on a 
 rather careworn look ; and her little arrow 
 misses its mark. 
 
 " You see, Amelia is at Florence," he 
 says explanatorily; "her father, Mr. Wil- 
 son, had a clergyman's throat in the 
 autumn, and was obliged to give up duty, 
 so they all went abroad. They have been 
 abroad all the winter ; you know that I 
 have not seen her since I came back from 
 the Rockies." 
 
 They are now walking in a winding 
 shrubbery path, whose laurels protect 
 them from the pinching wind. They 
 have turned several corners, and traversed 
 half a quarter of a mile before either 
 again breaks silence. It is the lady who 
 does so finally.
 
 46 ALAS/ 
 
 ik Jim, how long have you been engaged 
 to Amelia ?" 
 
 There is a sigh mixed with his answer. 
 
 "Eight years — eight years this next 
 June ; it was the second summer term 
 after I came up." 
 
 " And as far as you can see, you are 
 likely to be engaged for another eight 
 years ?" 
 
 "As far as I can see — yes; but then I 
 cannot see far," 
 
 Perhaps his companion is a fanciful 
 woman ; but she notices that this time he 
 does not sigh. 
 
 " Poor Amelia," she says, half under 
 her breath. 
 
 " Poor Amelia," repeats he sharply ; 
 " why poor ? — for being engaged to me ? 
 You are not very complimentary, Mrs. 
 Byng." 
 
 She looks up friendlily at him. " For 
 being engaged to you, or being only en- 
 gaged to you ? — which ? I leave you a 
 choice of interpretation." 
 
 But either Jim is too ruffled by the pity
 
 AMELIA. 47 
 
 expressed in her tone towards his be- 
 trothed, or her remarks have provoked in 
 him a train of thought which does not 
 tend towards loquacity. The loud rooks, 
 balancing themselves on improbably small 
 twigs above their heads, and, hoarsely 
 melodious, calling out their airy vernal 
 news to each other, make for some time the 
 only sound that breaks the silence of the 
 cold spring afternoon. It is again Mrs. 
 Byng who at last infringes it. 
 
 "If vou and Willy are both oroiiw to 
 Italy, why should not you go together ?" 
 
 Jim does not immediately answer ; the 
 project is sprung upon him with such 
 suddenness that he does not at once know 
 whether it is agreeable to him or the 
 reverse. 
 
 "You do not like the idea?" continues 
 the mother, trying, not very successfully, 
 to keep out of her tone the surprise she 
 feels at his not having jumped at a plan 
 so obviously to his own advantage. 
 
 " I did not say so. I did not even 
 think so."
 
 48 ALAS 
 
 "Willy is an ideal fellow-traveller," says 
 she, " excepting in the matter of punctu- 
 ality ; I warn you" — laughing — "that you 
 would always have to drag him out of bed." 
 
 "But," suggests Jim slowly, "even 
 supposing that I embraced your design 
 with the warmth which I see you think it 
 deserves, how can you tell that it would 
 meet with his approbation ? He has pro- 
 bably made up a party with some of the 
 other innocent victims of a corrupt Uni- 
 versity system." 
 
 " No, he has not ; the friend with whom 
 he was to have gone has thrown him over; 
 at least, poor man, that is hardly the way 
 to express it, for he has broken his leg ; 
 but anyhow he is hors de combat. If you 
 went with Willy," she adds, after a pause, 
 and with a rather wistful air, " I should 
 be sure of knowing if anything went 
 wrong." 
 
 " I am to dry-nurse him, in fact, only I 
 stipulate that, if he brings you home a 
 Contadina daughter-in-law, or ' commits 
 himself with a countess/ like the com-
 
 AMELIA. 49 
 
 mercial gentleman at Todgers's, you are 
 not to hold me responsible." 
 
 And so it comes to pass that a fortnight 
 later, while April is still young, Burgoyne, 
 en route to his Amelia, is standing at a 
 window of the Hotel de Genes at Genoa, 
 noisiest of hotels, though, to be sure, that 
 is its only fault. He is looking out at the 
 gay market that is held in the piazza 
 below — the gay market that is over and 
 gone by nine o'clock. 
 
 It seems odd that so many women, so 
 many umbrellas, so many baskets, so 
 many oranges and lemons — each lemon 
 with a glossy green leaf still adhering to 
 its inch of stalk — so many fresh vegetables 
 can be swept away in so short a time. 
 But they are ; all the gay kerchiefs are 
 fled, and have been replaced by a row of 
 fiacres with sad droop-headed horses, a 
 good hour before Byng appears — appears 
 radiantly well washed and apologetic. 
 
 " How many morning chapels did you 
 attend last term ?" asks Burgoyne with 
 some dryness. 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 ALAS! 
 
 "It is a vile habit," replies the other 
 sweetly, sitting down at a little table, and 
 unfolding his breakfast napkin. " I do 
 not mean going to chapel, but being so 
 late ; however, I really am improving. I 
 am a quarter of an hour — twenty minutes 
 earlier than I was yesterday, and, thank 
 God, we have no train to catch to- 
 day." 
 
 Burgoyne is rather inclined to echo the 
 thanksgiving a little later in the day, as 
 they stroll with the pleasant vagueness 
 with which one strays about a little-known 
 foreign town, not exactly knowing whither, 
 through the streets of the queenly city, 
 with which neither of them has much 
 acquaintance ; Byng's twenty-two years of 
 school and college, of cricket, and grouse, 
 and stalking, having left not much margin 
 for aught else ; and Burgoyne being in the 
 case of some widely-wandered shots and 
 explorers, to whom the Nyanza Lake and 
 the Australian Bush are more familiar than 
 Giotto's Campanile or the Lagoons. There 
 is a grayish-looking English sky, with now
 
 AMELIA. 51 
 
 and then little sprays of rain, and now and 
 then flashes of warm sun. 
 
 Neither of the young men knows much 
 Italian, and such as they possess they are 
 ashamed to air before each other in asking 
 their way, so they wander wherever chance 
 or fancy leads them. They look curiously 
 into churches, they walk down deep narrow 
 streets, whose houses have for three cen- 
 turies been threatening to embrace each 
 other across the strait sky strip far, far 
 above their heads. They glance at palace- 
 fronts, and wonder at the sculptured portals 
 where fresco and fruit garland and fine 
 tracery speak of a time at more leisure for 
 delicate work that has no end but beauty, 
 than this breathless one. Everywhere in 
 the gardens they see budding green, un- 
 trained roses making bowers, ripe oranges 
 hanging over the walls. They jostle against 
 women, each made charming, even the 
 ugliest of them, by the black lace kerchief 
 tied about her head. 
 
 " Henry James says that an English 
 crowd is the best-looking in the world," 
 
 4—2 
 LIBRARY
 
 52 ALAS! 
 
 says Byng, in a tone of strong dissent, fol- 
 lowing with his eyes a little tripping figure, 
 and with an expression of pronounced ap- 
 probation in those eyes, which gives Bur- 
 goyne a momentary twinge of misgiving as 
 to his chaperonship. " I should put it the 
 other way up, and say that they are the 
 ugliest." 
 
 "All crowds are ugly, and most indi- 
 viduals," replies Burgoyne, misanthropically 
 looking up from his guide-book. 
 
 They are sauntering down the Via Gari- 
 baldi, street of palaces that deserves an 
 antiquer name than that of the somewhat 
 shoddy and recent hero who has god- 
 fathered it. Noblest Via, down whose 
 stately length great towering bulks succeed 
 each other in solid majesty on either hand ; 
 bulks on whose high fronts, lofty-portaled, 
 o'errun with fresco, glorified by brush and 
 chisel, strength and beauty take hands in 
 unending wedlock. Into the noblest of all, 
 up the echoing stone stairs, down which 
 the feet of the masters have for ever ceased 
 to tread, they enter. As we all know, it
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 has been given to the city of Genoa — 
 lovely queen-city meriting so great a gift 
 — by the dying hand of its latest possessor, 
 the last of that high and beautiful race — if 
 we may judge of the dead by their pictures 
 — who paced its floors, and went forth in 
 final funeral pomp through its worthy-to- 
 be-imperial portals. 
 
 Burgoyne and Byng are standing before 
 the great Vandyke. The custode, opening 
 a shutter, and throwing wider a door, casts 
 a brighter ray of light for the staring 
 Britons — several others have joined them- 
 selves to our friends — to gape at it by. 
 What does the stately gentleman on his 
 great white horse, whom Vandyke has 
 made able to set at naught death's efface- 
 ment, think of them, as the custode slowly 
 swings him forward on his hinges, so that 
 the day-beams may bring out more clearly 
 still the arresting charm of his serious face, 
 his outstretched arm, and grave, gallant 
 bearing ? Looking at him, w T hose heart 
 among us is not besieged by an ache of 
 longing that that "young and princely"
 
 54 ALAS/ 
 
 gentleman on the brave white charger 
 should ride down to us out of his frame, 
 and bring back his world with him ? pro- 
 bably not a better world than ours, but 
 surely, surely a handsomer one. 
 
 After awhile the other tourists drift 
 away, but the two men still stand and 
 gaze. Into Burgoyne's mind has come a 
 sense of disgust with the present, a revolt 
 against steam trams and the Cromwell 
 Road — most perfect symbol of that bald, 
 unending, vulgar ugliness, which, in some 
 moods, must seem to every one the domi- 
 nant note of nineteenth-century life. The 
 light-hearted Byng, who always takes his 
 colour from his surroundings, is hushed 
 into a silence that is almost reverent 
 too. 
 
 " What a difference there is between his 
 Italian and his English pictures," he says 
 presently. " Do you remember the Mar- 
 chesa Balbi, and those divine Balbi chil- 
 dren in the Grosvenor, last year ? Oh, 
 no ! by-the-bye, you were in America. 
 The fog seemed to get into his brush
 
 AMELIA. 55 
 
 whenever he painted an Englishwoman, 
 always excepting Henrietta Maria, who 
 was not an Englishwoman, and whom he 
 was obviously rather in love with." 
 
 " Is that a piece of scandal of your own 
 invention, or is it founded on fact ?" asks 
 Burgoyne, rousing himself, and looking 
 over his shoulder towards the entrance to 
 the next frescoed, mirrored, pictured room, 
 whence he hears the sound of approaching 
 voices. In his eye is an idle and me- 
 chanical curiosity, mixed with vexation 
 that his short respite from his fellow- 
 countrymen is ended ; in this case, it is 
 fellow-countrywomen, for the tones that 
 are nearing are those of a woman, a woman 
 who is saying in a key of satisfaction, " Oh, 
 here it is ! I thought I remembered that 
 it was in this room." 
 
 At the same moment the speaker, as 
 well as the person addressed, came into 
 sight ; and in an instant out of Burgoyne's 
 eye has raced away the lack-lustre curiosity, 
 and has given way to an expression of 
 something beyond surprise, of something
 
 56 ALAS! 
 
 more nearly verging on consternation ; and 
 yet, after all, there is nothing very aston- 
 ishing in the fact that it is Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant who is the woman in search of the 
 Vandyke. There is nothing more sur- 
 prising in her being at Genoa than in his 
 being there himself. At that mart of nations 
 it can never be matter for wonder to meet 
 anyone ; but who is this to whom her 
 observation is addressed? It is not Mr. 
 Le Marchant, it is not a man at all ; it 
 is a slight woman — 
 
 " White as a lily, and small as a wand " — 
 
 like Lance's sister, dressed with that neat, 
 tight, gray - tinted simplicity, severe yet 
 smart, which marks the well-bred English- 
 woman on her travels. Is it one of the 
 younger ones, who has grown up so 
 startlingly like her? Miriam? Rose? or 
 is it, can it be, the dead Elizabeth ?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 In a ripe civilization such as ours there 
 are formulas provided to meet the require- 
 ments of every exigency that may possibly 
 arise ; but amongst them there is not one 
 which teaches us how to greet a person 
 come back from the dead, because it is 
 held impossible that such a contingency 
 can occur. Perhaps this is the reason 
 why Jim Burgoyne, usually a docile and 
 obedient member of the society to which 
 he belongs, now flies in the face of all the 
 precepts instilled into him by that society's 
 code. At the sight of Elizabeth Le 
 Marchant entering the room, clad in a 
 very neat tailor gown, instead of the 
 winding-sheet with which he had credited
 
 58 ALAS I 
 
 her, he at first stands transfixed, staring 
 at her with a hardness of intensity which 
 is allowed to us in the case of Titian's 
 " Bella," or Botticelli's " Spring," but has 
 never been accounted permissible in the 
 case of a more living loveliness. Then, 
 before he can control, or even question 
 the impulse that drives him, it has carried 
 him to her. 
 
 " Elizabeth !" he says, in that sort of 
 awed semi-whisper with which one would 
 salute a being plainly returned from the 
 other side, fearing that the fulness of a 
 living voice might strike too strongly on 
 his disused ear — " is it really Elizabeth ?" 
 
 Had Burgoyne been quite sure, even 
 now, of that fact ; if he had had his wits 
 well about him, he would certainly not 
 have addressed her by her Christian name. 
 But from the dead the small pomps and 
 ceremonies of earth fall off. We think of 
 them by their naked names — must we not 
 then appeal to them by the same when 
 they reappear before us ? 
 
 The girl — for she does not look much
 
 AMELIA. 59 
 
 more — thus rudely and startlingly bom- 
 barded, drops her Baedeker out of her 
 slim-gloved hand, and with a positive 
 jump at the suddenness of the address, 
 looks back apprehensively at her inter- 
 locutor. In her eyes is, at first, only 
 the coldly frightened expression of one 
 discourteously assailed by an insolent 
 stranger ; but in a space of time as 
 short as had served him to note the 
 same metamorphosis in the case of her 
 parents, he sees the look of half — three- 
 quarter — whole recognition dawn in her 
 eyes, followed — alas ! there can be no 
 mistake about it — by the same aspiration 
 after flight. There is no reason why she 
 should not recognise him again at once. 
 He has fallen a prey neither to hair nor fat 
 — the two main disguisers and disfigurers 
 of humanity. His face is as smooth and 
 his figure as spare as when, ten years ago, 
 he had given the pretty tomboy of sixteen 
 lessons in jumping the Ha! Ha! And 
 as to her identity, no shadow of doubt 
 any longer lingers in his mind.
 
 6o ALAS/ 
 
 The violence and shock of his attack 
 have made her crimson, have matched 
 her cheeks with those long - withered 
 damasks in the Moat garden, with which 
 they used to vie in bloomy vividness. 
 But even yet he does not treat her quite 
 as if she were really and veritably living ; 
 he has not yet got back his conventional 
 manners. 
 
 " I thought you were dead," he says, 
 his voice not even yet raised to its 
 ordinary key, some vague awe still sub- 
 duing it. 
 
 It must be a trick of his excited 
 imagination that makes it seem to him 
 as if she said under her breath, " So I 
 am ! 
 
 But before he has had time to do more 
 than distrust the testimony of his ears, 
 Mrs. Le Marchant strikes in quickly — 
 
 "We cannot help what Mr. Burgoyne 
 thinks," says she, with a constrained 
 laugh ; "but you are not dead, are you, 
 Elizabeth ? We are neither of us dead ; 
 on the contrary, we are very much alive.
 
 AMELIA. 6 1 
 
 Who can help being alive in this heavenly 
 place ? And you ? When did you come ? 
 What hotel are you at? Have you been 
 here long ? Do you make a long stay ?" 
 
 She pours out her questions with such 
 torrent-force and rapidity, as gives to her 
 auditor the conviction that it is her aim 
 to have a monopoly of them. 
 
 After one look of unbounded astonish- 
 ment at his companion's onslaught, Byng 
 has withdrawn to a discreet distance. 
 
 "You never mentioned her when I met 
 you in Oxford," says Burgoyne, disre- 
 garding her trivial and conventional ques- 
 tions, and turning his eyes away with 
 difficulty from his old playfellow. 
 
 Mrs. Le Marchant laughs again, still 
 constrainedly. 
 
 44 Probably you never asked after 
 her." 
 
 " I was afraid," he says solemnly ; 
 "after ten years one is afraid; and as 
 you did not mention her — you know you 
 mentioned all the others — I thought you 
 had lost her !"
 
 62 ALAS/ 
 
 A sort of slight shiver passes over the 
 woman's frame. 
 
 "No, thank God! Nor 
 
 During the foregoing little dialogue 
 about herself, Elizabeth has stood with 
 her eyes on the ground ; but at the end 
 of it she lifts them to smile lovingly at 
 her mother. They are very pretty eyes 
 still, but surely they seem to have cried a 
 good deal ; and now that the hurrying 
 blood has left her cheek again, Burgoyne 
 sees that she looks more nearly her age 
 than he had imagined at the first glance. 
 He has not heard her voice yet ; she has 
 not spoken, unless that first shaken whisper 
 — so much more likely to be the freak of 
 his own heated fancy — could count for 
 speech. He must hear her tones. Do 
 they keep an echo of the other world, as 
 he still imagines that he sees a shade from 
 it lying lingeringly across her face ? 
 
 " Do you ever climb apple-trees now ?" 
 he asks abruptly. She starts slightly, and 
 again, though with a weaker red wave, her 
 rather thin cheek grows tinged.
 
 AMELIA. 63 
 
 " Did I ever climb them ?" she says, 
 with a bewildered look, and speaking in 
 a somewhat tremulous voice. " Yes " — 
 slowly, as if with an effort of memory — 
 u I believe I did." 
 
 " You have forgotten all about it ?" 
 cries Jim, in an accent of absurdly dis- 
 proportioned disappointment. " Have you 
 forgotten the kangaroo too ? have you for- 
 gotten everything ?" 
 
 Perhaps she is putting her memory to 
 the same strain as he had done his in the 
 case of her mothers name on the occasion 
 of their Oxford meeting. At all events, 
 she leaves the question unanswered, and 
 the elder woman again hurries to her help 
 against this persistent claimant of reminis- 
 cences. 
 
 " You must not expect us all to have 
 such memories as you have," she says 
 with a touch of friendliness in her look. 
 " I must own that I too had quite for- 
 gotten the kangaroo ; and so I fear had 
 Robert, until you reminded us of it in 
 Mesopotamia."
 
 64 ALAS.' 
 
 " How is Mr. Le Marchant ?' ? inquires 
 Jim, thus reminded to put his tardy query 
 — " is he with you ?" 
 
 " No, he is not very fond of being 
 abroad ; it is not " — smiling — " * dear 
 abroad ' to him, but I think that he will very 
 likely come out to Florence to fetch us." 
 
 " You are going to Florence ?" cries 
 the young man eagerly. " So am I ! oh, 
 hurrah ! then we shall often meet." 
 
 But the touch of friendliness, whose 
 advent he had hailed so joyfully, has 
 vanished out of Mrs. Le Marchant's 
 voice, or, at least, is overlaid with a 
 species of stiffness, as she answers dis- 
 tantly, " We do not intend to go out at 
 all in Florence — I mean into society." 
 
 " But I am not society," replies he, 
 chilled, yet resolute. " I wish" — glancing 
 rather wistfully from one to the other — 
 " that I could give you a little of my 
 memory. If I could, you would see that, 
 after being so infinitely good to me at the 
 Moat, you cannot expect me to meet you 
 as total strangers now."
 
 AMELIA. 65 
 
 In the sense of ill-usage that fills his 
 breast, the fact of how almost entirely 
 oblivious he had been of the persons 
 before him. during the greater part of the 
 long interval that had parted them, has — 
 such is human nature — quite slipped his 
 Election. It is brought back to him 
 in some degree with a twinge by Mrs. Le 
 Marchant saying in a relenting tone, and 
 with an accent of remorse. " And you 
 have remembered us all these 
 
 He cannot, upon reflection, conscien- 
 tiously say that he has ; but is yet dis- 
 ingenuous enough to allow a speaking 
 silence to imply acquiescence. 
 
 "And you are en your way to Florence 
 too ?" continues she, mistaking the cause 
 of his dumbness ; the tide of compunction 
 evidently setting more strongly towards 
 him. in her womanly heart, at the thought 
 of the entire want of interest she has 
 manifested in the case of one whose long 
 faithfulness to her and her family had 
 deserved a better treatment. 
 
 1; 11 
 
 1 es. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 66 ALAS/ 
 
 His face clouds so perceptibly as he 
 pronounces this monosyllable, that his 
 interlocutor inquires, with a growing kind- 
 ness : 
 
 " Not on any unpleasant errand, I 
 hope ?" 
 
 He laughs the uneasy laugh of an 
 Anglo-Saxon obliged to tell, or at all 
 events telling, some intimate detail about 
 himself. 
 
 " I am going to see my young woman 
 ■ — the girl I am engaged to." 
 
 " Well, that is a pleasant errand, surely ?" 
 (smiling). 
 
 " Cest selon /" replies Jim gloomily. 
 " I have a piece of ill-news to tell her ;" 
 then, with a half-shy effort to escape into 
 generalities, " which way do you think 
 that ill-news read best — on paper or viva 
 
 O" 
 
 voce r 
 
 She shivers a little. 
 
 " I do not know. I do not like them 
 either way." 
 
 Then, taking out her watch, with the 
 evident determination to be surprised at
 
 AMELIA. 67 
 
 the lateness of the hour, she cries, "It is 
 actually a quarter to two ! Are not you 
 famished, Elizabeth ? I am !" 
 
 There is such apparent and imminent 
 departure in her eye that Burgoyne feels 
 that there is no time to be lost. 
 
 " Have you decided upon your hotel in 
 Florence ?" he asks precipitately. 
 
 " We have decided against them all," is 
 her answer. "We have taken a little 
 apartment — a poor little entresol ; but it 
 is such a poor little one, that I should be 
 ashamed to ask any of my friends to come 
 and see me there." 
 
 She accompanies the last words, as if to 
 take the sting out of them, with as sweet 
 and friendly a smile as any he remembers 
 in the Devonshire days. But the sting 
 is not taken out, all the same ; it lingers, 
 pricking and burning still, after both the 
 tall, thin, black figure, and the slim, little 
 gray one have disappeared. 
 
 The moment that this is the case, Byng 
 rejoins his friend ; a curiosity and alert 
 interest in his young eyes, which his com- 
 
 5-2
 
 68 ALAS! 
 
 panion feels no desire to gratify. He is 
 unable, however, to maintain the entire 
 silence he had intended upon the subject, 
 since Byng, after waiting for what, to his 
 impatience, appears a more than decent 
 interval, is constrained to remark — 
 
 " Did I hear you tell that lady, when first 
 you spoke to her, that she was dead ?" 
 
 " I thought she was." 
 
 " Had you heard it ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Did you see it in the papers ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 A pause. 
 
 l - I wonder why you thought she was 
 dead." 
 
 The other makes a rather impatient 
 movement. 
 
 " I had no reason — none whatever. It 
 was an idiotic inference." 
 
 Byng draws a long breath of satis- 
 faction. 
 
 "Well, at all events, I am very glad 
 that she is not." 
 
 Jim turns upon him with something of
 
 AMELIA. 69 
 
 the expression of face worn by Mrs. Sarah 
 Gamp on hearing Mrs. Prig express her 
 belief that it was not by Mrs. Harris that 
 her services would be required. " Why 
 should you be glad of that, Betsy? She 
 is unbeknown to you except by hearing. 
 Why should you be glad ?" 
 
 As Byng's case is a more aggravated 
 one than Mrs. Prigs, seeing that Eliza- 
 beth Le Marchant is unbeknown to him 
 even by hearing, so is the warmth, or 
 rather coldness, with which his friend 
 receives his remark not inferior to that 
 of " Sairey." 
 
 "I do not quite see how it affects you. 
 Why are you glad ?" 
 
 " Why am I glad?' replies the younger 
 man, with a lightening eye. " For the 
 same reason that I am glad that Vandyke 
 painted that picture" — pointing to it — " or 
 that Shakespeare wrote As You Like It. 
 The world is the richer by them all 
 three." 
 
 But to this poetic and flattering analogy, 
 Jim's only answer is a surly " Humph !"
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " There are no more bye-path meadows where you 
 may innocently linger, but the road lies long and 
 straight and dusty to the grave. You may think you 
 had a conscience and believed in God ; but what is 
 conscience to a wife ? .... To marry is to domesticate 
 the Recording Angel. Once you are married, there 
 is nothing left for you — not even suicide — but to be 
 good." 
 
 There is no particular reason why Bur- 
 goyne should not impart to his companion 
 what he knows — after all it is not very 
 much — about their two countrywomen. 
 Upon reflection he had told himself this, 
 and conquered a reluctance, that he can- 
 not account for, to mentioning their name ; 
 and to relating the story of those shadowy 
 idyllic two months of his life, which form
 
 AMELIA. 71 
 
 all of it that has ever come into contact 
 with theirs. So that by the time — some 
 thirty-six hours later — when they reach 
 Florence, the younger man is in possession 
 of as much information about the objects of 
 their common interest as it is in the power 
 of the elder one to impart. 
 
 To neither of them, meanwhile, is 
 any second glimpse vouchsafed of those 
 objects, eagerly — though with different 
 degrees of overtness in that eagerness — 
 as they both look out for them among 
 the luggage - piles and the tweed - clad 
 English ladies at the station. It had 
 been the intention of Burgoyne that he 
 and his friend should put up at the same 
 hotel as that inhabited by his betrothed 
 and her family ; but, finding that it is 
 full, he orders rooms at the Minerva, 
 and in the fallen dusk of a rather chill 
 spring night, finds himself traversing the 
 short distance from the railway to that 
 hotel. 
 
 As he and Byng sit over their coffee 
 after dinner in the salle a manger, almost
 
 72 ALAS! 
 
 its only tenants at that late hour, the 
 younger man remarks matter-of-factly, as 
 if stating a proposition almost too obvious 
 to be worth uttering — 
 
 " I suppose you are off to the Anglo- 
 Americain now." 
 
 "I think not," replies Jim slowly; "it 
 is past ten, you see, and they are early 
 people." He adds a moment later, as if 
 suspecting his own excuse of insufficiency, 
 " Mr. Wilson is rather an invalid, and 
 there is also an invalid, or semi-invalid, 
 sister ; I think that I had better not 
 disturb them to-night." 
 
 Byng has never been engaged to be 
 married, except in theory, and it is cer- 
 tainly no business of his to blow his 
 friend's flagging ardour into flame, so he 
 contents himself with an acquiescent 
 observation to the effect that the train 
 must have been late. But at all events 
 the next morning finds Burgoyne paying 
 his fiacre at the door of the Anglo- 
 Americain, with the confidence of a 
 person who is certain of finding those
 
 AMELIA. 73 
 
 he seeks, a confidence justified by the 
 result ; for, having followed a waiter 
 across a courtyard, and heard him knock 
 at a door on the ground-floor, that door 
 opens with an instantaneousness which 
 gives the idea of an ear having been 
 pricked to catch the expected rap, and 
 the next moment, the intervening gargon 
 having withdrawn, Jim stands face to face 
 with his Amelia. Her features are all 
 alight with pleasure, but her first words 
 are not particularly amorous. 
 
 " Would you mind coming into the 
 dining-room ? Sybilla is in the drawing- 
 room already this morning. She said she 
 was afraid it was going to be one of her 
 bad days, so I thought" (rather regret- 
 fully) " that possibly she would be a little 
 later than usual in coming down ; but, on 
 the contrary, she is much earlier." 
 
 It is possible that an extremely ardent 
 love may be independent of surroundings ; 
 may burn with as fierce a flame, when its 
 owner or victim is seated on a hard horse- 
 hair chair beside a dining-room table, in a
 
 74 ALAS! 
 
 little dull hotel back room, as when the 
 senses are courted by softly - cushioned 
 lounges, penetrating flower - scents, and 
 cunningly arranged bric-a-brac ; but per- 
 haps Jim's passion is not of this intense 
 and Spartan quality. At all events a 
 chill steals over him as Amelia leads 
 the way into that small and uncheerful 
 chamber where the Wilson family daily 
 banquet. He is not so lost to all sense 
 of what England and Amelia expect of 
 him, as not to take her in his arms and 
 kiss her very kindly and warmly, before 
 they sit down on two hard chairs side by 
 side ; and even when they have done so, 
 he still holds her hand, and kisses it now 
 and then. He has a great many things 
 to say to her, but " out of the abundance 
 of the heart the mouth speaketh " is not 
 invariably true. Sometimes that very 
 abundance clogs the utterance, and, after 
 a ten months' separation, the hinges of 
 even lovers' tongues are apt at first to be 
 somewhat rusty. 
 
 " And are you really glad to see me
 
 IEL1A. 
 
 again ?"' asks the woman — she is scar : 
 a girl, having the doubtful advantage of 
 being her betrothed's senior by two years. 
 The horsehair chairs are obviously power- 
 less to take the edge off her bliss : and 
 she can scarcely command her voice as 
 she asks the question. 
 
 u I decline to answer all such futile 
 inquiries/' replies he. smiling not un- 
 kindly ; but there is no tremor in his 
 voice. " Even if I did not discourage 
 them on principle, I should have no time to 
 answer them to-dav : I have so much to sav 
 to vou that I do not know where to besan." 
 
 " After ten months that is not very 
 surprising," rejoins she. with a stilled 
 sigh. There is no sentimental reproach 
 in her words or tone : but in both lurks a 
 note of wistfulness which gives his con- 
 science a prick. 
 
 "Of course not! of course not!' he 
 rejoins hastily: "but it is not really ten 
 months — no. surely " 
 
 " Ten months, one week, two days, 
 four hours and a half!"
 
 76 ALAS! 
 
 Against such exactitude of memory 
 what appeal has he ? He attempts none, 
 and only thinks with a faint unjust irrita- 
 tion that she might have spared him the 
 odd hours. 
 
 " And how are things going ? How 
 are you all getting on ?" he asks, pre- 
 cipitating himself upon a fresh subject, 
 since he feels prevented by circumstances 
 from saying anything likely to bring him 
 much distinction upon the old one. " Your 
 father ?" 
 
 "His throat is better" — with an accent 
 of hesitating filial piety, as if there were 
 something else about him that was not 
 better. 
 
 " And Sybilla ?" 
 
 " Oh, poor Sybilla ! she has her bad 
 days now and then." 
 
 " And, like the early Christians, she 
 resolves to have all things in common. I 
 expect that her family have their bad days 
 too," says Jim drily. 
 
 " Well, we do sometimes," replies 
 Amelia with reluctant admission ; " but
 
 AMELIA. 77 
 
 she really docs try to control herself, poor 
 thing ; she is hardly ever unbearable now." 
 
 " And Cecilia ? * 
 
 " She is rather in trouble just now ; I 
 fear there is no doubt that the man she 
 was engaged to has thrown her over. 
 You never saw him? oh. no! Of 
 course, the atlair came on after you left 
 England." 
 
 Burgoyne's eyebrows have gone up, 
 and his face has assumed an expression 
 less of surprise than admiration at this 
 piece n\ news. 
 
 "How many does that make? Four? 
 Well, couraj There is luck in odd 
 
 numbers ; perhaps she will land the 
 fifth." 
 
 " She will tell you about it herself," 
 says Amelia ; " she tells everybody ; she 
 likes talking about it — it is very odd, but 
 she does. When you throw me over " — 
 rubbing his hand which she holds, with 
 shy and deprecating caressingness, against 
 her own cheek — " I shall tell nobody ; I 
 shall keep my misfortune very dark."
 
 7 8 ALAS! 
 
 " When I do !" repeats he with laugh- 
 ing emphasis ; but to his own ear both 
 the emphasis and the laughter sound flat. 
 This is perhaps the cause why he, a 
 second time, runs away from his subject ; 
 or, more probably, he is really in haste to 
 get to the new one. " Meanwhile," he 
 says, his eyes involuntarily dropping to 
 the carpet, as if he had rather not see the 
 effect of his words upon her ; " meanwhile, 
 someone has thrown me over." 
 
 " You ?" 
 
 " Yes, me ; I did not write it to you, 
 because I do not see much use in putting 
 down bad news in black and white, and 
 even with this little delay, I am afraid," 
 with a dry smile, " that you will have 
 plenty of time to enjoy it." 
 
 He pauses for an instant, and she does 
 not hurry him with any teasing questions ; 
 but waits, with meek patience, till he feels 
 inclined to go on. 
 
 " My aunt is going to be married." 
 
 If he has wished that his news shall 
 produce the effect of a torpedo, he has no
 
 AMELIA. 79 
 
 cause to complain of his want of success. 
 His placid Amelia vaults to her feet. 
 
 " Married !" she repeats with a gasp. 
 " Why, she is quite, quite old !" 
 
 " She is sixty-five !" 
 
 The colour has flooded all Amelia's 
 face ; the blazing colour that means not 
 pleasure, but consternation. It is some 
 moments before she can frame her next 
 query. 
 
 " And is he ? — do you ? — has she chosen 
 wisely, I mean ?" 
 
 Jim laughs again. 
 
 " Can one choose wisely at sixty-five ? 
 Well, whether she has or no is a matter 
 of opinion ; she has chosen the curate of 
 the parish, who, by reason of his extreme 
 juvenility, is still in deacon's orders." 
 
 Miss Wilson's limbs are shaking so that 
 she cannot maintain her standing attitude. 
 She sinks down by the dining-table again 
 in her hard chair. It is a very hard chair 
 on which to receive such ill news. 
 
 " And cannot you hinder it, cannot you 
 dissuade her ?" she asks falteringly.
 
 8o ALAS! 
 
 " I shall not try ; poor old woman ! 
 After all, she has a right to pursue her 
 own happiness in her own way, only I 
 wish that she had made up her mind 
 twenty years ago ; though to be sure, 
 how could she ?" — with another smile — ■ 
 " Since, at that time, her bridegroom was 
 not much more than born." 
 
 A dead silence supervenes — a silence of 
 shocked stupefaction on the one side, of 
 rather dismal brooding on the other. At 
 length Amelia nerves herself to put a 
 question upon which it seems to her, not 
 very incorrectly, that her whole future 
 hangs. She does it in such a low voice 
 that none but very sharp ears could have 
 caught it. Jim's ears are so ; practised 
 as they are in listening for the stealthy 
 tread of wild animals, and for the inde- 
 scribable sounds of mountain solitudes at 
 night. 
 
 " Will it — will it — make a great* differ- 
 ence to you ?" 
 
 Burgoyne lifts his eyes, which have been 
 idly bent on the floor, and looks straight
 
 AMELIA 
 
 and full at her across the corner of the 
 table. 
 
 " It will make all the difference !" he 
 answers slowly. 
 
 Poor Amelia is holding her handkerchief 
 in her hand. She lifts it to her mouth and 
 bites a corner of it to hide the quivering 
 of her lips and chin. She does not wish 
 to add to his pain by any breakdown on 
 her own part. But Jim divines the quiver- 
 ing even under the morsel of cambric, and 
 looks away again. 
 
 " Her money is almost entirely in her 
 own power," he continues, in an unemo- 
 tional voice ; " and when she announced 
 her marriage to me, she also announced 
 her intention of settling the whole of it 
 upon her — her " — he pauses a second, as if 
 resolved to keep out of his voice the accent 
 of satire and bitterness that pierces through 
 its calm — " her husband." 
 
 Amelia has dropped both shielding hand 
 and handkerchief into her lap. She has 
 forgotten her effort to conceal the blankness 
 of her dismay. Unless she conceals the 
 
 vol. I. 6
 
 82 ALAS! 
 
 whole of her face, indeed, the attempt would 
 be in vain, since each feature speaks it 
 equally. 
 
 " Her whole fortune ?" she repeats, 
 almost inaudibly. " All?' 
 
 " What, all my pretty chickens and their dam?" 
 
 says Jim, oppressed by her overwhelmed 
 look into an artificial and dreary levity, 
 and in not particularly apt quotation. " My 
 dear, do not look so broken-hearted. I 
 am not absolutely destitute ; I need not 
 become a sandwich man. I have still got 
 my ;£8oo a year, my very own, which 
 neither man nor mouse, neither curate nor 
 vicar, can take from me. I can still go on 
 rioting upon that ; the question is " — his 
 words coming more slowly, and his tone 
 growing graver — "have I any right to ask 
 you to riot on it too ?" 
 
 Her hand has gone in feverish haste out 
 to his for answer, and her eyes, into which 
 the tears are welling, look with an intense 
 dumb wistfulness into his ; but, for the 
 moment, it remains dumb. There is
 
 AMELIA. 83 
 
 something painful to Burgoyne in that 
 wistfulness, almost more painful than the 
 telling of that news which has produced it. 
 He looks down upon the table-cloth, and, 
 with his disengaged hand, the one not im- 
 prisoned in his betrothed's fond hold, draws 
 patterns with a paper-knife accidentally left 
 there. 
 
 "The one thing that I blame her for," 
 he continues, not following up the branch 
 of the subject that his last speech had 
 begun to open up, and speaking with a 
 composure which, to the stricken Amelia, 
 appears to evidence his attainment of the 
 highest pinnacle of manly fortitude, " the 
 only thing I blame her for, is her having 
 hindered my adopting any profession. Poor 
 old woman, it was not malice prepense, I 
 know ; she had not seen her Jessamey 
 then, probably had not even a prophetic 
 instinct of him, but as things turned out " 
 — stifling a sigh — " it would have been 
 kinder to have put me in the way of earn- 
 ing my own living." 
 
 Amelia's head has sunk down upon his 
 
 6—2
 
 84 ALAS! 
 
 hand — he feels her hot tears upon it ; but 
 now that the theme has no longer reference 
 to herself, she can speak. She straightens 
 herself, and there is a flash, such as he has 
 very seldom seen there, in her rather colour- 
 less orbs. 
 
 "It was monstrous of her !" she cries, 
 with the almost exaggerated passion of a 
 usually very self-controlled person. " After 
 having always told you that you were to 
 be her heir !" 
 
 " But had she told me so ?" replies Jim, 
 
 passing his hand with a perplexed air over 
 
 his own face. " That is what I have been 
 
 trying to recall for the last few days. I 
 
 never remember the time when I did not 
 
 believe it, so I suppose that someone must 
 
 have told me so ; but I could not swear 
 
 that she herself had ever put it down in 
 
 black and white. However," tossing his 
 
 head back with a gesture as of one who 
 
 throws off his shoulders a useless burden, 
 
 " what does that matter now ? I am not 
 
 her heir, I am nobody's heir ; we must 
 
 look facts in the face ! Amelia, dear " — in
 
 AMELIA. 85 
 
 a tone of reluctant tender affection, as of 
 one compelled, yet most unwilling, to give 
 a little child, or some other soft, helpless 
 creature, pain — " we must look facts in the 
 face !" 
 
 There is something in his voice that 
 makes Amelia's heart stand still ; but she 
 attempts no interruption. 
 
 "It is very hard for me, dear, after all 
 these " — he pauses a second ; he is about 
 to say " weary years' waiting," but his 
 conscience arrests him ; to him they have 
 not been weary, so, after a hardly -per- 
 ceptible break, he goes on — " after all 
 these many years' waiting, to have come 
 to this, is not it ?" 
 
 He had not calculated on the effect 
 which would be produced by his melan- 
 choly words and his caressing tone. She 
 buries her face on his shoulder, sobbing 
 uncontrollably. 
 
 " They were not long !" she murmurs 
 brokenly. " Nothing is, nothing can be, 
 long to me as long as I have you, or 
 the hope of you !"
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 It is, perhaps, fortunate for Amelia that 
 she cannot see the expression of the face 
 which looks out above her prostrate head 
 into space, with a blankness equal to what 
 had been her own, a blankness streaked, 
 as hers was not, with remorse. He would 
 give anything to be able to answer her 
 in her own key, to tell her that, as long 
 as he can keep her, the going or coming 
 of any lesser good hurts him as little as 
 the brushing past his cheek of a summer 
 moth or wind-blown feather. But when 
 he tries to frame a sentence of this kind, 
 his tongue cleaves to the roof of his 
 mouth. He can only hold her to him 
 in an affectionate clasp, whose dumbness
 
 AMELIA. 87 
 
 he hopes that she attributes to silencing 
 emotion. She herself indulges in no very- 
 prolonged manifestation of her passion. 
 In a few moments she is again sitting 
 up beside him with wiped eyes, none the 
 handsomer, poor soul, for having cried, 
 and listening with a deep attention to an 
 exposition of her lover's position and pros- 
 pects, which he is at no pains to tinge 
 with a factitious rose-colour. 
 
 " Have you realized," he says, "that I 
 shall never be better off than I am now ? 
 never ! never ! For though of course I 
 shall try to get work, one knows how 
 successful that quest generally is in the 
 case of a man with no special aptitudes, no 
 technical training, and who starts in the race 
 handicapped by being ten years too late !" 
 
 But the dismalness of this panorama 
 raises no answering gloom in the young 
 woman's face. She nods her head gently. 
 
 " I realize it." 
 
 "And this is what I have brought you 
 to, after all these years' waiting," he con- 
 tinues, in a tone of profound regret. "All
 
 88 ALAS! 
 
 I can offer you at the end of them is a not 
 particularly genteel poverty, not even a 
 cottage with a double coach-house!" — 
 laughing grimly. 
 
 " I do not want a double coach-house, 
 nor even a single one !" replies Amelia 
 stoutly, and laughing too, a little through 
 returning tears. " Do not you know that 
 I had rather drive a costermonger's barrow 
 with you than go in a coach and six with- 
 out you !' 
 
 This is the highest flight of imagination 
 of which Jim has ever known his matter- 
 of-fact Amelia guilty, and he can pay her 
 his thanks for it only in compunctious 
 kisses. Perhaps it is they, perhaps it is 
 the thought which dictates her next hesi- 
 tating speech, that bring a light into 
 Amelia's tear-reddened eyes. 
 
 "If you will never be better off " 
 
 She stops. 
 
 "Yes, dear, go on; 'if I shall never 
 be better off' — I certainly never shall; 
 I feel sure that you will be able to put 
 my earnings for the next ten years into
 
 AMELIA. 89 
 
 your eye, and see none the worse for 
 them t 1 
 
 " If — you — will — never — be — better — 
 
 off " she repeats again, more slowly. 
 
 and breaking off at the same place. 
 
 -Well, dear?" 
 
 " If you will neve* be better off" — this 
 time she finishes her sentence ; but it is 
 rendered almost inaudible by the fact of 
 her flushed face and quivering lips being 
 pressed against his breast — " why should 
 we wait any longer ?" 
 
 Why should we wait any longer? To 
 most persons, granted the usual condition 
 of feeling of a betrothed couple, this 
 would seem a very natural and legitimate 
 deduction from the premises ; but, strange 
 to say, it comes upon Burgoyne with the 
 shock of a surprise. He has been think- 
 ing vaguely of his change of fortune as a 
 cause for unlimited delay, perhaps for the 
 rupture of his engagement, never as a 
 reason for its immediate fulfilment. 
 
 He gives a sort of breathless gasp, 
 which is happily too low for Amelia with
 
 9o ALAS! 
 
 her still hidden face to hear. To be 
 married at once ! To sit down for all 
 time to Amelia and ^800 a year ! To 
 forego for ever the thrilling wandering 
 life ; the nights under the northern stars, 
 the stealthy tracking of shy forest creatures ; 
 the scarce coarse delicious food, the cold, 
 the fatigue, the hourly peril, that, since its 
 probable loss, is ever in sight, make life so 
 sweetly worth having — all, in short, that 
 goes to make up so many an Englishman's 
 ideal of felicity ; that has certainly hitherto 
 gone to make up Jim's. To renounce it 
 all ! There is no doubt that the bitterness 
 of this thought comes first ; but presently, 
 supplanting it, chasing it away, there 
 follows another, a self- reproachful light 
 flashing over his past eight years, showing 
 him his own selfishness colossal and com- 
 plete for the first time. In a paroxysm of 
 remorse, he has lifted Amelia's face, and, 
 framing it with his hands, looks search- 
 ingly into it. 
 
 " I believe," he says in a shaken voice, 
 " that you would have married me eight
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 years ago, on my pittance, if I had asked 
 you !" 
 
 No " Yes " was ever written in larger 
 print than that which he read in her 
 patient pale eyes. Even at this instant 
 there darts across him a wish that they 
 were not quite so pale, but he detests 
 himself for it. 
 
 " And I never suspected it !" he cries 
 compunctiously. " I give you my word 
 of honour, I never suspected it ! I 
 thought you looked upon my poverty in 
 as prohibitory a light as I did myself." 
 
 " I do not call it such great poverty," 
 replies Amelia, her practical mind reas- 
 suming its habitual sway over her emo- 
 tions. " Of course it is an income that 
 would require a little management ; but 
 if we cut our coat according to our cloth, 
 and did not want to move about too 
 much, we might live either in a not very 
 fashionable part of London, or in some 
 cheap district in the country very comfort- 
 ably." 
 
 Despite his remorses, a cold shiver runs
 
 92 ALAS! 
 
 down Burgoyne's spine at the picture that 
 rises, conjured up with too much distinct- 
 ness by her words before his mind's eye ; 
 the picture of a snug Bayswater villa, 
 with a picturesque parlour-maid, or the 
 alternative cottage in some dreary Wilt- 
 shire or Dorsetshire village, with a shrub- 
 bery of three aucuba bushes, and a 
 kitchen-garden of half an acre. It may 
 be that, her frame being in such close 
 proximity to his, she feels the influence 
 of his shiver, and that it suggests her 
 next sentence, which is in a less sanguine 
 key. 
 
 " But it would not be fair ; it would be 
 asking you to give up too much." 
 
 The meek abnegation of her rather 
 worn voice brings his remorse uppermost 
 again on the revolving wheel of his feel- 
 ings. 
 
 "Is not it my turn to give up some- 
 thing ?" he asks tenderly ; " and besides, 
 it is time for me to settle ! I am — I am 
 tired of wandering !" 
 
 As this atrocious lie passes his lips, he
 
 AMELIA. 93 
 
 catches his breath. Tired of the Sierras ! 
 Tired of the bivouacs among the dazzling 
 snow ! Tired of the august silence of the 
 everlasting hills ! Heaven forgive him for 
 saying so ! Perhaps there is no great air 
 of veracity in his assertion, for she looks 
 at him distrustfully ; so distrustfully that 
 he reshapes his phrase. " At least, if I 
 am not, I ought to be !" 
 
 But still she gazes at him with a wistful 
 and doubting intentness. 
 
 " If I could only believe that that was 
 true !" 
 
 " It is true," replies he, evading her 
 look; "at least, true enough for all work- 
 ing purposes ; we all know that life is a 
 series of compromises, a balancing of gain 
 and loss. I shall lose something, I do 
 not deny that, but I gain more, I gain 
 you /" 
 
 " That is such a mighty gain, is not it ?" 
 she says with a melancholy smile, as that 
 intuition of the truth which sometimes 
 comes to unloved or tepidly loved women 
 flashes upon her.
 
 94 ALAS! 
 
 u A matter of taste — a mere matter of 
 taste !" rejoins he hurriedly ; aware of the 
 unreal ring in his own words, and trying, 
 with all his might, to feel as well as speak 
 light-heartedly. 
 
 She shakes her head in a way which 
 tells him how poorly he has succeeded. 
 In a desperate, if not very well-judged 
 attempt to convince her of his sincerity, 
 his next speech is uttered. 
 
 " Why should not we be married at 
 once? to-morrow? the day after to-morrow? 
 at the Consulate — of course there is a 
 Consulate — or the English church ; I sup- 
 pose there are half a dozen English 
 churches. Why not ? We have nothing 
 to wait for, and we are both of age !" 
 
 He has had no unkindly intention in 
 the last words, but the moment that these 
 are out of his mouth, a glance at Amelia's 
 unblooming face and unyouthful figure tell 
 him that they were not happily chosen. 
 At the first instant that the suggestion of 
 an immediate marriage reaches the hearer's 
 brain, it sends a dart of joy over her
 
 AMELIA. 95 
 
 features. To be married at once ! To 
 put an end for ever to the interminable 
 waiting, to enter at last — at last upon the 
 possession of the so long deferred Canaan. 
 But in a second, that first bright flash is 
 chased away, and gives place to a look of 
 aimost humiliation. 
 
 " You must be making fun of me, to 
 suggest such a thing !" she says in a 
 wounded voice ; " you know how wildly 
 impossible it would be that I should leave 
 them all— my father, Sybilla, without any 
 preparation." 
 
 " Without any preparation !" replies Jim, 
 raising his eyebrows. " Have not you been 
 preparing them for the last eight years ?" 
 
 He feels a vague unjust irritation with 
 her for opposing his proposition, though 
 deep down in his heart he knows that he 
 would have felt a much greater annoyance 
 had she eagerly closed with it. As she 
 does not answer a question, which the 
 moment that it is uttered he feels to have 
 been rather brutal, he goes on, against his 
 will, in the same sarcastic kev.
 
 96 ALAS! 
 
 " I am afraid that you will have to leave 
 them all some day ; I am afraid that our 
 Bayswater mansion — by-the-bye, I am sure 
 it will not be a mansion, for I am sure it 
 will not have a back-door — will not be 
 likely to contain all. Your father — Sybilla 
 — Sybilla and her physic bottles take up a 
 good deal of room, do not they ?" 
 
 It is fortunate for Amelia that she is too 
 preoccupied by the thought of her own 
 next speech to take in the full acerbity of 
 the last remark. 
 
 "If you would consent to wait till we 
 get home — father does not mean to stay 
 in Italy beyond the end of next month — 
 we might be married in June ; that " (with 
 a pink flush of happiness), " would not be 
 so long to wait." 
 
 In a second a sum of the simplest de- 
 scription executes itself in Burgoyne's head. 
 It is now the second week of April ; they 
 are to be married in June, he has then 
 eight weeks left. It shocks himself to 
 find that this is the way in which he 
 puts it. All the overt action that he per-
 
 AMELIA. 97 
 
 mits himself, however, is to say with a 
 shrug : 
 
 " As you will, then, as you will !" adding, 
 since he feels that there is something dis- 
 courteous even to unchivalry in so bald an 
 acquiescence in his prospective bliss, " Of 
 course, dear, the sooner I get you the 
 better for me !" 
 
 No lover could have been overheard 
 giving utterance to a more proper or suit- 
 able sentiment ; so that it is lucky that this 
 is just the moment that Cecilia chooses for 
 entering. 
 
 " Do not be afraid," she says, with a 
 laugh. 44 I will not stay a minute, but I 
 just wanted to say 4 How do you do ?' 
 How well you are looking ! and how 
 young !" — with an involuntary glance of 
 comparison from him to her sister ; a 
 glance of which they are both rather pain- 
 fully conscious. " Ah !" (sighing) " with 
 all your Rocky Mountain experiences, it is 
 evident that you have been having an 
 easier time than we have !" 
 
 " Are you alluding to Sybilla ?" asks 
 
 vol. i. 7
 
 98 ALAS! 
 
 Jim gravely. " I have no doubt, from 
 what I know of her powers in that line, 
 that she has been extremely trying." 
 
 " Yes, partly," replies the girl doubt- 
 fully ; " but I have had troubles of my 
 own too. I dare say that Amelia has told 
 you, or probably " (with a second and 
 heavier sigh) " you have been more plea- 
 santly employed." 
 
 " Amelia did hint at some disaster," 
 replies Jim, struggling to conceal the 
 rather grim smile which is curving his 
 mouth, a feat the more difficult since he 
 has no moustache to aid him ; " but I have 
 been waiting to hear all the details from 
 yourself." 
 
 " I know that you are apt to think I 
 fancy things," says Cecilia, sitting down on 
 a third hard chair, "but there could be no 
 fancy in this case ; I am sure I was as 
 much engaged as any girl ever was. I had 
 chosen the drawing-room paper and bought 
 the dining-room grate !" 
 
 " That is further than we ever got, is 
 not it, Amelia?" says Jim, breaking, at
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 99 
 
 the relation of this prosaic fact, into the 
 laugh he has been with difficulty swallow- 
 ing ; " but, Cis, if I were you, I should 
 keep the grate ; one does not know how 
 soon its services may be required again !" 
 
 "It is all very well for you to joke,' 
 returns Cecilia, with an offended air; "it 
 may be play to you, but it is " 
 
 "Not death, not quite death to you!" 
 interrupts Burgoyne, glancing with an ex- 
 pressive smile at her buxom outline. " I 
 think you will live to fight another day, 
 will not you ? But I really am extremely 
 sorry ; tell me all about it." 
 
 "He was perfectly right when we left 
 England," says Cecilia, mollified at once, 
 and apparently relieved by the invitation 
 to unbosom herself of her woes ; "nobody 
 could have been more so ; he came to see 
 us off at Folkestone, and the tears were in 
 his eyes ; they were really, it was not my 
 imagination, was it, Amelia ? And at first 
 he wrote all right, and said all the usual 
 things ; but then his letters gradually grew 
 fewer and fewer, and after I had written
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 and telegraphed a great many times — I do 
 not know how many times I did not tele- 
 graph to ask whether he was ill, and you 
 know how expensive foreign telegrams are 
 — he sent me a few lines, oh, such cruel 
 lines, were not they, Amelia? to say that, on 
 reflection, he feared that the feeling he had 
 for me was not such as to justify his enter- 
 ing on so sacred an engagement as marriage 
 with me ; but he ought to have thought of 
 that before, ought not he ?" 
 "Undoubtedlv!" 
 
 " I will never engage myself to a clergy- 
 man again," says Cecilia pensively. 
 
 Burgoyne's thoughts have strayed at the 
 mention of the cloth of his sister-in-law 
 elect's truant admirer, to that member of 
 the same profession who has lately robbed 
 him of his heritage, and he replies with a 
 good deal of feeling : 
 
 " They do play one dirty turns now and 
 then, do not they ? Yes, Cis, stick to lay- 
 men for the future !" 
 
 Cecilia receives this counsel with a 
 melancholy sigh, fixing her large eyes on
 
 AMELIA. 10 
 
 the carpet, but presently resumes the con- 
 versation in a livelier key. 
 
 "Let us talk about something pleasanter," 
 she says. " Had you a good journey ? Do 
 you like your travelling companion ? Why 
 did not you bring him with you? Is he 
 nice ?" 
 
 "At all events, he is not a clergyman," 
 replies Jim, with a rather malicious smile ; 
 u but no, my dear, do not let your thoughts 
 turn in that direction ! You must look at 
 him as poor women look at diamonds !" 
 
 " I am sure I do not know what you mean !" 
 replies Cecilia, reddening. " I have not the 
 slightest wish to look at him ! I am not in 
 spirits to ' look,' as you call it, at anyone !" 
 
 A moment later, she adds, with a sus- 
 picion of malice in her tone : 
 
 " We are certainly an unlucky family 
 in our loves! I, heartlessly thrown over, 
 and Amelia, engaged for eight years !" 
 
 Burgoyne smiles. " Amelia is not going 
 to be engaged any longer," he says, putting 
 his arm round his betrothed. " Amelia is 
 going to be married at once !"
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 It would seem natural that, after so long 
 a separation. Burgoyne should dine and 
 spend the evening with his betrothed ; 
 but such is not the case. For this, how- 
 ever, he is not to blame ; he is quite pre- 
 pared to stay with her until she turns him 
 out. Had he not better school himself to 
 domestic habits, since he is so soon to 
 assume them for life ? But in considera- 
 tion for Sybilla he is dismissed undined. 
 It is not that she ever shares the family 
 dinner at their table a part in the salle a 
 manger* but the thought of their enter- 
 taining a guest with a conviviality far 
 greater in her imagination than would be 
 the case in reality, while she herself lies
 
 :--: 
 
 ■ 
 
 a last word. What dm 
 
 - ;: -' : v : ;-_— 
 
 will doc YoaT she saps* w ~_~ 
 
 r- -- 5--r. ~:-r:- i.-_ "" r._ :_: - 
 
 r : : 
 
 -■: _ _ : 
 
 dona
 
 do me good, and so I am sure i J to 
 
 " Poor Amelia will have the 
 
 distraction of being married." rejoins the 
 young man. who fee he could 
 
 repeat the statrmeirt of this fact too often 
 :: h:."r.st": lt.z : :her= 
 
 "And I think it would be only civil." 
 ::-::r._ts Z±::V.l -±rsis:±r.:iy :r. : "..:: i 
 do not see how you could avoid it. if you 
 invited your friend to join 
 
 I lit Jim escapes without having com- 
 mitted himself to this promise, and 
 
 nders _-."::_: zr.t :: r. in zr.t i:* 
 lowering Kg : E f on the Lung 
 
 not strolling along with the k 
 loiterers, among whom r every two soft 
 Tuscan voices there is a loud metallic 
 ^ ir.e. He watches the 
 
 ges g from their drive 
 
 ' -. '.':.- I — iint :':.- r. "-.: :\iiin^ :vtr 
 the weir die rivef yellow as Tiber 
 yesterday, and to-day shot with blue and 
 
 t it tumbles with a 
 ni^asan: - The booses or.

 
 io6 ALAS! 
 
 loved to look and adore in silence and 
 alone ; henceforth he will never have 
 the right to be alone ; henceforth he 
 will never have the right to go any- 
 where without his wife. Strange and 
 terrible word to which he tries in vain 
 to accustom his mental ears ; and, thanks 
 to the narrowness of their means, neither 
 of them will be able to stir from the 
 strait precincts of their pinched home. 
 
 He comes back to his hotel, through 
 the Piazza of the Duomo. All the infinite 
 richness of cupola and arch, high up, are 
 still wrapped in the fiery rose cloak of 
 sunset, while below the body of the great 
 church, with all its marbles and traceries 
 and carved wonders, is clad in the sobriety 
 of twilight. 
 
 On reaching the Minerva, he finds that 
 Byng has not yet returned, or rather 
 that he has been in and gone out again. 
 He waits dinner half-an-hour for him, 
 and then dines without him ; dines in 
 solitude, since it is not till his cup of coffee 
 is before him, and his cigarette between
 
 AMELIA. 107 
 
 his lips, that his young friend appears. It 
 is evidently no unpleasant errand that has 
 detained him, for he arrives beaming, and 
 too excited even to perceive the menu 
 which a waiter offers him. 
 
 " They have arrived !" he cries. Oddly 
 enough it never occurs to Burgoyne to 
 inquire who " they " may be : it seems as 
 much a matter-of-course to him as to the 
 handsome pink and white boy before him, 
 that the pronoun must relate to Elizabeth 
 Le Marchant and her mother. 
 
 His only answer, however, is an " Oh !" 
 whose tone is rather more eagerly in- 
 terested than he could have wished. 
 
 " I thought that thev could not stay 
 more than another day in Genoa," con- 
 tinues Byng, at length becoming aware of 
 the menu at his elbow ; but only to wave 
 it impatiently away. " So I thought I 
 would just run down to the station to meet 
 the evening train, the one we came by last 
 night ; however, it must have been more 
 punctual than yesterday, for before I 
 reached the station, I met them ; I mean
 
 io8 ALAS! 
 
 they passed me in a fiacre. I only caught 
 a glimpse of her face, but I saw her hand ; 
 it was lying on the carriage door like a 
 snow-flake." 
 
 " Like my grandmother !" cries Bur- 
 goyne in a rage, for which he cannot quite 
 account to himself, at this ingenious and 
 novel simile. 
 
 Byng laughs ; the laugh of a thoroughly 
 sweet-natured person, who, in addition, 
 has some special cause for good-humour. 
 
 " I do not know what colour your grand- 
 mother was ; but she must have been very 
 unlike most people's if she was like a 
 snow-flake." 
 
 Jim's cross mouth unbends into a reluc- 
 tant smile. It is not the first time that 
 he has discovered how useless, and also 
 impossible, it is to be out of humour with 
 Byng. 
 
 " I had a good mind to tell my fiacre 
 man to follow them," continued Byng, in 
 an excited voice ; "but, in the first place, 
 I did not know how to say it — really, Jim, 
 we must get up a little of the lingo — and,
 
 AMELIA. 109 
 
 in the second place, I thought it would 
 perhaps be rather too much in the private 
 detective 11116." 
 
 4i I think it would have been extremely 
 ungentlemanlike !" rejoins Jim severely. 
 
 Byng reddens ; but still without losing 
 his temper. 
 
 " That is coming it rather strong, is not 
 it ? but anyhow, I did not do it." And 
 then, by tacit agreement, they both drop 
 the subject. 
 
 During the next three or four days it 
 is not named between them, nor indeed 
 do they see much of each other. Bur- 
 goyne spends the greater part of his days 
 with Amelia. Whatever cause for the 
 accusation he may have given during the 
 previous eight years, nobody can say that 
 he neglects her now. He passes long 
 hours at her side, on the same hard chair 
 that had supported him on their first in- 
 terview, in the little dismal dining-room ; 
 going into calculations of house-rent and 
 taxes, drawing up lists of necessary furni- 
 ture. He even makes a bid for Cecilia's
 
 tio ALAS! 
 
 drawing-room grate ; but that young lady, 
 whose forecasting mind can look beyond 
 present grief to future sunshine, refuses to 
 part with it. The lovers are not always, 
 however, studying Maple's and Oetzmann's 
 lists. Sometimes Jim varies the diversion 
 by taking his future wife to picture-galleries 
 and churches, to the Uffizi, the Accademia, 
 San Lorenzo. It is doubtful whether 
 Amelia enjoys these excursions as much as 
 she does the selection of bedsteads and 
 saucepans, her pleasure being in some 
 degree marred by a feverish anxiety to say 
 what she thinks her lover expects of her 
 as they stand before each immortal canvas. 
 In her heart she thinks the great statues 
 in the Medici Chapel frightful, a heresy in 
 which she is kept in countenance by no 
 less a light than George Eliot, who in one 
 of her letters dares to say of them, " they 
 remained to us as affected and exaggerated 
 in the original, as in copies and casts." 
 To Amelia many of the frescoes appear 
 lamentably washed out, nor are her efforts 
 to hide these sentiments attended with any
 
 AMELIA. in 
 
 conspicuous success, since nothing is more 
 hopeless than for one utterly destitute of a 
 feeling for works of art to feign it, without 
 having the imposture at once detected. 
 
 Burgoyne's mind during these expedi- 
 tions is a battle-ground for pity and rage ; 
 pity at the pathos of his poor love's en- 
 deavours ; rage at their glaring failure. 
 Cecilia sometimes accompanies the lovers, 
 but this does not make matters much 
 better. Cecilia devotes but a very cursory 
 notice to the pictures ; her attention being 
 almost whollv centred on the visitors, and 
 on finding resemblances for them anions 
 the inhabitants of her own village at home, 
 for the accuracy of which she appeals at 
 every moment to her sister. Even* day 
 she asks Burgoyne to fulfil his promise — a 
 promise which he as punctually assures her 
 that he never made — to introduce his friend 
 to her. He has a strangely strong reluc- 
 tance to comply with this simple request, 
 which yet, he knows, will have to be com- 
 plied with some day. When Amelia is his 
 wife. Bvn£ will have to know Cecilia, for
 
 ii2 ALAS! 
 
 she will probably spend a great deal of 
 her time with them — make their house a 
 second home, in fact. 
 
 And meanwhile Jim is keenly, and for 
 some reason sorely, conscious of the fact 
 that, during the hours in which he is 
 stooping his weary head over catalogues 
 of fenders and fireirons, carving-knives 
 and fish-slices, blankets and ticking, Byng 
 is searching Florence through her length 
 and breadth for their two countrywomen. 
 It is not indeed necessary to credit his 
 friend with any special quest to account 
 for his wanderings through the "adorable 
 little city," as Henry James most truly 
 calls it, since he is a young man of a 
 wide and alert curiosity, with a large 
 appetite for pleasure both intellectual and 
 the reverse. Jim, whose acquaintance 
 with him has chiefly been with his 
 rowdy undergraduate side, bear-fighting, 
 and proctor- defying, is astonished at his 
 almost tremulous appreciation of the Ghir- 
 landajos, the Lorenzo di Credis, the 
 Giottos, that in a hundred chapels, from
 
 AMELIA. 113 
 
 a hundred walls, shine down in their 
 mixed glory of naive piety and blinding 
 colour upon him. 
 
 One day the elder man is sitting in his 
 bedroom with a despatch-box and a sheet 
 of paper before him. He is embarked 
 upon a dreary calculation as to what his 
 guns will fetch. He has made up his 
 mind to sell them. Of what further use 
 can they be to him ? He will not be 
 allowed to shoot at the Bayswater omni- 
 buses, which will be the only game hence- 
 forth within his reach. While he is thus 
 employed upon an occupation akin to, 
 and about as cheerful as, that of Rawdon 
 Crawley before Waterloo, Byng enters. 
 
 "You look as if you had a headache, 
 old chap," he says, sitting down upon 
 his friend's bed. 
 
 "If you had been going through as 
 many kitchen - ranges as I have this 
 morning, perhaps you would have a 
 headache," replies Jim gravely. "You 
 know that I am going to be married as 
 soon as I get home." 
 
 vol. 1. 8
 
 ii4 ALAS! 
 
 Byng nods ; and Burgoyne, while in- 
 wardly blessing the tact that spares him 
 any congratulations, takes himself to task 
 for having made the announcement so 
 lugubriously as to render felicitation obvi- 
 ously inapplicable. 
 
 " When are you going to introduce me 
 to Miss Wilson ?" asks Byng presently. 
 "If you shirk it much longer, I shall 
 think that you are ashamed of me." 
 
 Jim glances affectionately, yet not quite 
 comfortably, at his young friend, and the 
 thought flashes across his mind that, in 
 his last remark, the latter has put the 
 saddle on the wrong horse. 
 
 " You have so large an acquaintance in 
 Florence already," he says, with some 
 stiffness, "that I did not know that you 
 would care to add to it." 
 
 " One cannot have too much of a good 
 thing," replies the other joyously. " You 
 know I love my fellow-creatures ; and in 
 this case," he adds civilly, " I do care very 
 much." 
 
 Burgoyne's eyes are bent on the paper
 
 AMELIA. us 
 
 before him, which contains the melan- 
 choly enumeration of his firearms — " A 
 500 double-barrelled express, by Henry, 
 of Edinburgh ; a 450 single - barrelled 
 ditto, by same maker," etc., etc. — as he 
 says slowly : 
 
 " I shall be very happy." 
 
 His acceptance of the proposition can 
 hardly be called eager ; but of this Byng 
 appears unaware. 
 
 " When shall it be, then ? To-day — 
 this afternoon ?" 
 
 " No-0-0 ; not to-day, I think. It has 
 been arranged that we are to go to San 
 Miniato — Amelia, her sister, and I." 
 
 " Three of you ?" cries Byng, raising 
 his eyebrows. " Then why not four ? 
 Why may not I come too ?" 
 
 There being, in point of fact, no reason 
 why he should not, and Cecilia's morning 
 prayer being still ringing in her future 
 brother-in-law's ears, he gives a dull and 
 lagging assent ; so that at about three 
 o'clock the two men present themselves 
 at the door of the Wilsons' apartment 
 
 8—2
 
 n6 ALAS/ 
 
 at the Anglo - Americain Hotel. That 
 Sybilla is not expecting visitors is evident 
 by the fact that, at the moment of their 
 entrance, she is taking her own tempera- 
 ture — a very favourite relaxation of hers — 
 with a clinical thermometer. She removes 
 the instrument from her mouth without 
 indecent haste, and holds out a languid 
 white hand to Byng. 
 
 " So you are going off on a long 
 afternoon's pleasuring ?" she says, with 
 a pathetic smile. " I am so glad that 
 neither of my sisters is going to stay at 
 home with me. We invalids must guard 
 against growing selfish, though I think 
 that is perhaps more the danger with 
 malades imaginaires ; we real ones have 
 learnt our lesson of suffering better, I 
 hope." 
 
 " You do not look so very ill," replies 
 Byng, in his sympathetic voice, letting 
 his eyes rest caressingly on the prostrate 
 figure, which has yet no smallest sign of 
 emaciation about it. 
 
 "Ah, that is because of my colour,"
 
 AMELIA. 117 
 
 replies Sybilla, with an animation slightly 
 tinged with resentment. "You, too, fall 
 into that common error. My London 
 doctor tells me that there is no such 
 unerring indication of radical delicacy of 
 constitution as a fixed pink colour like 
 mine ; the more feverish I am, the deeper 
 it grows. It is very hard" — smiling again 
 sadly — " for one gets no pity !" 
 
 " Where is Cecilia?" cries Jim brusquely, 
 and fidgeting in his chair. " Why is not 
 she ready ?" 
 
 As he speaks, the young lady in ques- 
 tion enters — so obviously arrayed for con- 
 quest, in so patently new a hat, and such 
 immaculate pale gloves, that across Bur- 
 goyne's mind there flashes, in vexed mirth, 
 the recollection of the immortal caution 
 addressed by Major O'Dowd to his friend 
 and comrade, " Moind your oi, Dob, my 
 boy !" Would he not do well to repeat 
 it to his friend ?
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 They are off now, there being nothing 
 further to retard them, leaving Sybilla 
 tete-a-tete with her thermometer. They 
 are off, sociably packed in one fiacre — 
 
 " Four precious souls, and all agog 
 To dash thro' thick and thin." 
 
 Not, indeed, that there is much dash about 
 the Florentine cab-horses — saddest among 
 God's many sad creatures — with not a 
 sound leg among them, with staring coats 
 and starting ribs, and poor broken knees ; 
 and with their sadness emphasized by the 
 feathers stuck in their tired heads, as if 
 to mock their wretchedness by a sort of 
 melancholy smartness ! Sad as they are,
 
 AMELIA. 119 
 
 it must be owned that they are the only 
 sad things in the cheerful Florentine 
 streets, where no one seems over-busy, 
 where, out of the deep - eaved, green- 
 shuttered houses, people lean, talking to 
 acquaintances on the shadowed pavement 
 below. All the narrow thoroughfares are 
 full of bustling life ; but there is no hag- 
 gard squalor apparently, no dreadful gin- 
 palace gaiety. It does not follow here 
 that a man must be drunk because he 
 sings. And down the strait, colourful 
 streets one looks — down a vista of houses 
 diversely tall, each with its cream-yellow 
 face and its green shutters, varied here 
 and there by the towering bulk of some 
 giant - blocked mountain - palace, through 
 whose grim, barred windows a woman 
 peeps, or a little dog shows his pointed 
 nose — looks to where, in dwindling per- 
 spective, the view is closed by a narrow 
 picture of lucent purple hill, Fiesole or 
 Bellosguardo — names to which the tongue 
 cleaves lovingly. Through the gay streets, 
 over bridge and blue Arno, our travellers
 
 i2o ALAS/ 
 
 go ; their driver cracking a prodigious 
 whip, and with a tiny red dog, absurdly 
 shaven, and with nothing but a small 
 woolly head and tail left of the original 
 design, seated gravely beside him. Away 
 they go, pleasuring ; but pleasure and 
 pleasuring are not always identical. 
 
 Burgoyne sits opposite Amelia ; and as 
 for Cecilia, it is to be supposed that her 
 heartache is for the moment dulled, since 
 the same carriage-rug covers her knees 
 and those of Byng. Burgoyne does not 
 look at Amelia ; nor, though his eyes are 
 fixed upon the passing objects, does he 
 at first see aught of them. His vision 
 is turned inwards, and to his own soul 
 he is mechanically repeating in dismal 
 recitative, "A double-barrelled, central 
 fire, breech-loading gun, by Lancaster ; 
 made strong enough at the breech to 
 shoot a spherical bullet." 
 
 As for Amelia, her features are not of 
 a build to express any emotion with much 
 brilliancy ; but over them lies a deep and 
 brooding content. Amelia has not had
 
 AMELIA. 121 
 
 much undiluted happiness in her life, but 
 she is exceedingly happy to-day. She is 
 even strangely free from the carking fear 
 which usually assails her, of praising mis- 
 takenly, of being enthusiastic in the wrong 
 places, and passing over the right ones 
 unnoticed. If she keep to a vague 
 generality of handsome adjectives, she 
 will surely do well enough, and, on this 
 high holiday that her heart is holding, 
 he cannot be cross to her. 
 
 As to Byng, he is emphatically of the 
 school of divinity taught by Tommy 
 Moore, nor was he ever known, when 
 lacking " the lips that he loved," to fail 
 to make love to "the lips that are near." 
 His taste is too good for him to have 
 chosen Cecilia as a companion ; but, since 
 fate has allotted her to him for the after- 
 noon, he finds no difficulty in making the 
 best of her. Nor, to do her justice, is 
 she destitute of charms of a certain kind, 
 though her face has the inevitable air of 
 commonness incident upon a very short 
 nose and a very long upper lip. But she
 
 122 ALAS/ 
 
 has a good deal of bloom, and of crisp, 
 showy-coloured hair, and a very consider- 
 able eye-power. Byng's attachment to 
 the fair sex being of far too stout a 
 quality to be blunted by such trifles as 
 an inch too much or too little of nose 
 or lip, he also, like Amelia, is thoroughly 
 prepared to enjoy himself. 
 
 Up the turning Via Galileo they climb, 
 to the Basilica at the top — stock-drive of 
 all tourists — hackneyed as only Yankee- 
 dom and Cockneydom, rushing hand in 
 hand through all earth's sacredness, can 
 hackney. But even hackneying is power- 
 less to take off the freshness to the eye 
 that sees it for the first time, of that view 
 when he beholds the Lily City lying close 
 at his feet, so close that it seems he could 
 throw a stone into her Arno. 
 
 They have left their fiacre, and, as 
 naturally happens in a partie carrde — 
 more especially when one couple are 
 betrothed lovers — have broken into pairs. 
 Burgoyne leans pensively on the terrace 
 parapet, and his sombre eyes rest on the
 
 AMELIA. 123 
 
 band of sister hills, joining hands in per- 
 petual watch round valley and town ; hills 
 over which, in this late spring, there is 
 more a promise than a performance of 
 that green and many-coloured wealth of 
 verdure and blossom that one associates 
 with Firenze's fair name. But it is a 
 promise that is plainly on the verge of 
 a bounteous fulfilment. Then his look 
 drops slowly to the city herself. In what 
 a little space comparatively does the 
 Florence that is immortal lie ! The 
 Duomo, the lily Campanile " made up of 
 dew and sunshine," the Baptistery, Santa 
 Croce, the Palazzo Vecchio ; he could 
 compass them in a ten minutes' walk. 
 And around this small nucleus of the 
 undying dead and their work, what a 
 nation of gleaming villas of the polyglot 
 living — a nation of every tongue, and 
 people, and language ! All over the 
 hills is the sheen of white walls, the 
 verdure of tended gardens ; they stretch 
 away almost to where the Apennines raise 
 their cold white fronts against the sky.
 
 124 ALAS! 
 
 He rouses himself to remember that 
 Amelia is beside him, and that he ought 
 to say something to her. So he makes 
 a rather banal observation upon the small- 
 ness of the enceinte that encloses so much 
 loveliness. 
 
 "Yes, is not it tiny?" replies she, with 
 the eager pleasure of having a remark 
 made to her which she cannot go wrong 
 in answering. " Think of London ! Why, 
 the whole thing is not as big as South 
 Kensington or Bayswater !" 
 
 He shudders. Must the accursed suburb 
 pursue him even here ? 
 
 11 Let us go into the church," he says, 
 in a tone that a little dulls his companion's 
 buoyancy. 
 
 She follows him crestfallenly, asking 
 herself whether she has answered amiss 
 here also. She does not trust herself to 
 any comment upon the interior. 
 
 Byng and Cecilia are standing before 
 the high altar, from over which a mosaic 
 Madonna stiffly beams upon them ; and as 
 the other couple approach them, Burgoyne
 
 AMELIA. 125 
 
 hears the words " drawing-room grate " 
 issue from his future sister-in-law's lips. 
 
 " Bravo, Cis !" he says in a dry aside ; 
 " you are getting on nicely ! I did not 
 think that you would have reached the 
 drawing-room grate till to-morrow." 
 
 To avoid intruding further on her deli- 
 cate confidences, and also to escape from 
 two Americans, w T ho are nasally twanging 
 Hare and Horner at each other, varied by 
 trips into Baedeker, he passes into a side 
 chapel made famous by one of the loveliest 
 tombs that ever feigned to simulate in 
 marble death's ugliness. The Yankee 
 voices are high and shrill, but they had 
 need to be higher and shriller still before 
 they could break the slumber of him whose 
 resting-place Jim has invaded in his flight 
 from Cecilia and New York. Was ever 
 rest so beautiful as this of the young 
 sleeper? A priest he was, nay cardinal, 
 and youthful and lovely and chaste ! and 
 now in how divine a slumber is he lapt ! 
 But how should that four hundred years' 
 slumber not be divine, watched by such a
 
 126 ALAS! 
 
 gentle Mary-mother as is watching his ; 
 smiling as if to tell him that he does well 
 to sleep, that sleep is better than waking, 
 that death is better than life ! There is a 
 sunken look about his fair eyelids, as if he 
 had gone through suffering to his rest; and 
 his reposeful hands are thin ; but below him, 
 as he lies in his spotless marble tranquillity, 
 upon his sarcophagus, the rose garlands 
 wave in lovely frieze, and the riotous horses 
 rear and plunge in fulness of life. 
 
 Burgoyne has not perceived that Amelia 
 did not follow him. She has, in point of 
 fact, remained in the body of the church, 
 immersed in her guide-book, steadily work- 
 ing through the marble screen and pulpit, 
 and still five good minutes off the side 
 chapel, in which her lover stands in so 
 deeply brown a study, that he is not aware 
 of the intrusion upon his solitude of two 
 women, until he is roused with a leap by 
 the voice of one of them addressing — not 
 him, of whose presence she is obviously as 
 unaware as was he of hers, until this 
 moment — but her companion.
 
 AMELIA. 127 
 
 44 Oh, mother ! am I not a fool, at my 
 age, too ? but I cannot help it, it makes 
 me cry so !" 
 
 Burgoyne does not need the evidence of 
 his eyes. His ears and his startled heart 
 have enough assured him whose are the 
 tears called forth by that indeed most 
 touching effigy at which he himself has 
 been so pensively staring. 
 
 The mother's answer is inaudible ; and 
 then again comes the voice of Elizabeth 
 Le Marchant, tearful and vibrating. 
 
 44 You know I have seen so few beautiful 
 things in my life, I shall get used to them 
 presently ; it is only sheer happiness that 
 makes me " 
 
 She stops abruptly, having evidently dis- 
 covered for herself, or been made aware by 
 her mother of his vicinity ; and even if she 
 had not done so, he feels that he must lose 
 no time in announcing himself. 
 
 44 Florence is a place that does make 
 one often choky," he says, eagerly taking 
 the hand which she hesitatingly, and with 
 some confusion, offers him.
 
 128 ALAS/ 
 
 It is not quite true ; Florence has never 
 made him feel choky ; and, if he is ex- 
 periencing that sensation now, it is certainly 
 not the dead cardinal of Portugal who is 
 giving it to him. 
 
 " I am a fool, a perfect fool !" replies 
 Elizabeth, hastily and shamefacedly wiping 
 away her tears. 
 
 To give her time to recover herself, and 
 also because he has not yet greeted the 
 girl's mother, Jim turns to her. 
 
 " Did not I tell you that we should meet 
 here ?" 
 
 There is such undisguised joy and 
 triumph in his tone, that perhaps Mrs. 
 Le Marchant has not the heart to dash 
 his elation ; at all events, he is conscious 
 in her tone of a less resolute determination 
 to keep him at arm's-length, than on their 
 two last meetings. 
 
 " I do not think that I contradicted you," 
 she answers, smiling. 
 
 He may steal another look at Elizabeth 
 now. She is not crying any longer. 
 Indeed, despite the real moisture on her
 
 AMELIA. 129 
 
 cheeks, she strikes him as looking happier 
 than at their last meeting ; and though 
 the interval between now and then is too 
 short for any such alteration to have taken 
 place in reality, yet he cannot help imagin- 
 ing that the hollows in those very cheeks 
 are less deep than when they stood together 
 before the great Vandyke in the Brignoli 
 Sala Palace. 
 
 ''And the entresol? is it all your fancy 
 painted it T he asks quickly, feeling a sort 
 of panic fear, that if he stops putting 
 questions for one minute they will slip out 
 of his grasp again, as they did in the 
 Genoese Palace. 
 
 Elizabeth's face breaks into a soft bright 
 smile. She has a dimple in one cheek and 
 not in the other. She must have had it 
 ten years ago ; how comes he to have 
 forgotten so sweet and strange a peculi- 
 arity ? 
 
 " It is delightful — perfectly delightful !' J 
 " Large enough to receive your friends 
 in, after all ?" 
 
 But the moment that the words are out 
 vol 1. 9
 
 13° ALAS! 
 
 of his mouth, he perceives that he has 
 made a false step, and is somehow treading 
 dangerous ground. Elizabeth's smile goes 
 out, like a light blown into nothingness by 
 a sudden wind. 
 
 "We have not many friends," she mur- 
 murs ; " we — we are not going out at all." 
 
 He hastens to change his cue. 
 
 " Byng and I are at the Minerva," he 
 says, beginning to talk very fast ; " I 
 wonder if, by any chance, you are in our 
 neighbourhood ; have I forgotten, or did 
 you never tell me where the entresol lies ? 
 Where is it, by the-bye ?" 
 
 Ensnared by the wily and brazen sudden- 
 ness of this demand, Miss Le Marchant 
 has evidently no evasion ready, and, after 
 an almost imperceptible pause of hesitation, 
 answers : 
 
 "We are at 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio." 
 
 She is looking doubtfully and half un- 
 easily in his face, as she gives this answer, 
 but he has scarcely time for a flash of 
 self-congratulation at having obtained the 
 information, which he had never realized
 
 AMELIA. 131 
 
 the eagerness of his desire for until this 
 moment, before he becomes aware that his 
 interlocutor's eyes are no longer meeting 
 his, but have wandered to some object over 
 his shoulder. What that object is he is 
 not long left in doubt. Whether it is a 
 genuine accident, or one of those spurious 
 ones, of which those who profit by them 
 are the artificers, Jim does not know ; and, 
 as he is at the time, and will be when 
 he thinks of the circumstance to the end 
 of his life, too angry to question Byng 
 on the subject, it is pretty certain that he 
 never will know ; but so it is that at this 
 moment the voice of his protege breaks 
 upon his ear : 
 
 " You are not going to give us the slip 
 like this, old chap — oh ! I beg your 
 pardon !" 
 
 But begging pardon ever so sweetly 
 does not alter the fact that he has rushed, 
 like a bull in a china shop, into the middle 
 of the dialogue. All four look at each 
 other for a second : then, since there is no 
 help for it, Jim presents his disciple, and 
 
 9—^
 
 132 
 
 ALAS! 
 
 the next moment the latter has slid into 
 talk with Elizabeth, and she is responding 
 with an ease and freedom from embarrass- 
 ment such as had never marked her sparse 
 and hardly won utterances to the elder 
 man. 
 
 Byng has the advantage of him, as he 
 somewhat bitterly thinks. Byng has no 
 connection with " old times ;" those poor 
 old times which she and her mother have 
 so unaccountably taken en grippe. He 
 seems suddenly relegated, as by some 
 natural affinity, to the mother. On their 
 two last meetings the eagerness to converse 
 has been all on his side ; yet now he 
 has nothing to say to her. It is she 
 who addresses him. 
 
 " I hope that you found your young lady 
 flourishing," she says civilly. 
 
 He gives a slight inward start, though — 
 as he is thankful to feel — his body is quiet. 
 ''His young lady !" Yes, of course he has 
 a young lady ! Has there been any danger 
 during the last five minutes of his for- 
 getting that fact ? and has Mrs. Le Mar-
 
 AMELIA. 133 
 
 chant done him an unnecessary service in 
 recalling it ? 
 
 " Oh, yes, thanks, she is all right !" 
 
 " Is she still in Florence ?" 
 
 " Yes, she is here ; by-the-bye " — looking 
 round with a sudden sense that he ought 
 to have missed her — " what has become of 
 her ? Oh, here she is !" 
 
 For even while the words are on his 
 lips, Amelia and Cecilia come into sight. 
 Amelia with a shut Baedeker, and the 
 serene look of an easy conscience and a 
 thoroughly performed duty on her amiable 
 face ; Cecilia with a something of search 
 and disquiet in her large rolling eye, 
 which would have made him laugh at 
 another time. 
 
 A sudden instinct, with which his will 
 has nothing to do, makes him flash a 
 look back at Mrs. Le Marchant, as if 
 to gauge the effect produced upon her 
 by his betrothed ; and, following her 
 glance, he finds that it is resting on 
 Cecilia. She thinks that he is engaged 
 to Cecilia. The mistake is intolerable
 
 134 ALAS! 
 
 to him, and yet a second's reflection 
 tells him that it is a natural one. In 
 a second he sees his Amelia as she 
 presents herself to a strange eye. Miss 
 Wilson is only thirty-one, but upon her 
 has already come that set solid look of 
 middle age, which overtakes some women 
 before they are well over the borders of 
 youth, and which other women manage 
 to stave off till they are within near hail 
 of forty. Yes ; the mistake is quite a 
 natural one. Most people would suppose 
 that the showy Cecilia, still fairly youthful, 
 and with so many obvious and well-pro- 
 duced "points," must be his choice; and 
 yet, as I have said, the idea that any- 
 one should credit him with her ownership 
 is intolerable to him. 
 
 " Here she is !" he cries precipitately. 
 " The one to the right side, the other is 
 her sister ; may I — may I present them to 
 you ?" 
 
 Perhaps it is his irritated fancy that 
 dictates the idea, but it seems to him as 
 if he detected a sort of surprise in Mrs.
 
 AMELIA. 135 
 
 Le Marchant's face, when he effects the 
 introduction he has proposed, and to 
 which she accedes courteously, after a 
 pause of hesitation about as long as had 
 followed his inquiry of Elizabeth as to 
 their address. 
 
 Five minutes later they have all 
 sauntered out again on the terrace, and 
 Burgoyne is again leaning on the wall ; 
 but this time he has no fear of hearing 
 of Bayswater, for it is Elizabeth who is 
 beside him. Since last he looked at it 
 half an hour ago, a sort of glorification 
 has passed over the divine view. Down 
 where the river twists through the plain 
 country, there is a light, dainty mist, but 
 the mountains have put on their fullest 
 glory. They are not green, or brown, 
 or purple, or blue ; but clad in that 
 ineffable raiment woven by the sun, that 
 defies our weak vocabulary to provide it 
 with a name. A little snow T - chain lies 
 on the sun-warmed neck of Morello, and 
 along the tops of the further Apennines, 
 right against the acute blue of the heavens,
 
 136 ALAS! 
 
 lies a line of snow, that looks like a fleece- 
 soft cloud resting from its journeyings on 
 their crests ; but it is no cloud, nor is 
 there any speck upon the gigantic com- 
 plete arch that over-vaults town and valley 
 and radiant mountains. In the folds of 
 these last, the shadows slumber ; but over 
 all the city is the great gold glory of 
 spring. The one thing in Florence that 
 frowns among so many smiles is the 
 scowling Pitti, and that, from here, is 
 invisible. Nearer to him, against the 
 azure, stand the solemn flame - shaped 
 cypresses arow, and beside them — as 
 unlike as life to death — a band of quiver- 
 ing poplars, a sort of transparent gold- 
 green in their young spring livery. The 
 air is so clear that one can go nigh to 
 counting the marbles on the Duomo walls. 
 In a more transparent amber light, fuller 
 of joy and gaiety, cannot the saved be 
 dancing around, as in Fra Angelico's 
 divine picture ? cannot they be walking 
 in the New Jerusalem of St. John's great 
 dream ? Only in the New Jerusalem
 
 AMELIA. i. s: 
 
 there are no galled and trembling-kneed 
 fiacre horses. 
 
 Elizabeth is sitting on the wall, her 
 light figure — is it possible that it has been 
 in the world only four years less than 
 Amelia's solid one? — half- supported by 
 one small gray hand outspread on the 
 stone ; her little fine features all tremu- 
 lous with emotion, and half a tear gathered 
 again in each sweet eye. As Jim looks 
 at her, a sort of cold covetous gripe 
 pinches his heart. 
 
 " What a woman with whom to look at 
 all earth's lovelinesses — with whom to con- 
 verse without speech !" 
 
 Even as he so thinks, she turns her 
 head towards him, and, drawing in her 
 breath with a long low sigh, says : 
 
 " Oh, how glad I am I did not die 
 before to-day !" 
 
 Her eyes are turned towards him, and 
 yet, as once before, he realizes that it is 
 not to him that either her look or her 
 thoughts are directed. Both are aimed 
 at an object over his shoulder, and, as
 
 i 3 8 ALAS! 
 
 before, that object is Byng. Byng, too, 
 has been gazing at the view. There are 
 tears in Byng's eyes also. Stephenson 
 says that some women like a man who 
 cries. Byng cries easily and genuinely, 
 and enjoys it ; and, as he is a remark- 
 ably fine young man, there is something 
 piquant in the contrast between his wet 
 blue orbs and his shoulders. 
 
 As Burgoyne rolls home that afternoon 
 in his fiacre, as before, placed opposite 
 Amelia, his mental vision is no longer 
 fixed upon a "double-barrelled, central 
 fire, breech-loading gun ;" it is fixed with 
 a teasing tenacity upon the figure of 
 a smallish woman, perennially looking, 
 through brilliant tears, over his shoulder 
 at somebody else.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "Was it 12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio ?" 
 
 There are no tears in Byng's eyes as 
 he asks this question next morning — asks 
 it of his friend, as the latter sits in the 
 Fumoir, with an English paper in his 
 hands, and a good cigar between his clean- 
 shaven lips. It has struck him several 
 times lately that he will have to give up 
 good cigars, and take to a churchwarden 
 pipe and shag instead. But, so far, the 
 churchwarden and the shag remain in the 
 future. 
 
 " 12, or 12 bis, Piazza d'Azeglio?" in- 
 quires Byng. 
 
 "Was what 12 or 12 bis?" replies his 
 friend, with a somewhat obviously inten-
 
 t 4 o ALAS/ 
 
 tional obtuseness ; but Byng is far too 
 thoroughly healthy and happy a young 
 animal this morning to take offence easily. 
 
 " I mean Miss Le Marchant's address," 
 he answers, explaining as amiably as if he 
 had not been perfectly aware that it was only 
 11 cussedness " that had dictated the query. 
 
 There is a slight pause. Burgoyne 
 would like to answer that he does not 
 remember — would like still more to answer 
 that he does not see what business it can 
 be of Byng's ; but, since he is not destitute 
 of common sense, a second's reflection 
 shows him that he has no good reason for 
 either the lie or the incivility, so he replies, 
 pretty calmly, with his eyes still on his 
 leading article : 
 
 " I believe Miss Le Marchant said 12 
 bis." 
 
 Having obtained the information he 
 wanted, and finding his companion not 
 conversationally disposed, Byng is moving 
 away again, when he is arrested by Jim's 
 voice, adding to the intelligence he has 
 just given the monosyllable :
 
 I 4 I 
 
 ••Why what"'" asks Byng, r 
 readily, and laughing- 
 ten tional c 
 
 himself bv the oth r 
 
 - 
 
 *• Why did you a- 
 
 •• I am thinking of paying n ects 
 
 the: afternoon, and I did not v. 
 
 to ring at the wrong belL" 
 
 A re- 
 
 hidden bv h 
 
 '• Did Miss or M Marcr 
 
 you to call T 
 
 Bvns: 
 
 M Both of them are as 
 the babe unbcr 
 
 "You asked yourself ther r~ub- 
 
 :e). 
 
 Bvns: nods 
 - 
 
 The plural pronoun has dropped out of 
 s ght, but r o\ them pei 5 . 
 
 Th 
 Jim
 
 142 ALAS! 
 
 " If she did not say ' Yes ' — if she said 
 
 ' No,' ' he begins, with an accent of 
 severity, " I fail to understand " 
 
 " She did not say ' No,' " interrupts 
 Byng, still half laughing, and yet reddening 
 as well. " She began to say it ; but I 
 suppose that I looked so broken-hearted — 
 I am sure I felt it — that she stopped." 
 
 As Jim makes no rejoinder, he continues 
 by-and-by : 
 
 " After all, she can but send me away. 
 One is always being sent away " (Jim 
 wishes he could think this truer than he 
 does); "but now and again one is not 
 sent, and those are the times that pay for 
 the others! I'll risk it." 
 
 There is a hopeful ring in his voice 
 as he ends, and again a pause comes, 
 broken a third time by the younger man. 
 
 "Come now, Jim" — looking with a 
 straight and disarming good humour into 
 his friend's overcast countenance — " speak 
 up ! Do you know of any cause or impedi- 
 ment why I should not ?" 
 
 Thus handsomely and fairly appealed to,
 
 AMELIA. 143 
 
 Burgoyne, who is by nature a just man, 
 begins to put his conscience through her 
 paces as to the real source of his dislike to 
 the idea of his companion's taking advan- 
 tage of that introduction which he himself 
 has been the means — however unwillingly 
 — of procuring for him. It is true that 
 Byng's mother had adjured him, with tears 
 in her eyes, to preserve her boy from 
 undesirable acquaintances ; but can he, 
 Burgoyne, honestly say that he looks 
 upon Elizabeth Le Marchant as an un- 
 desirable acquaintance for anyone ? The 
 result of his investigations is the discovery 
 of how infinitesimal a share in his motives 
 regard for his young friend's welfare has 
 had. The discovery is no sooner made 
 than he acts upon it. 
 
 " My dear boy," he says — and td his 
 credit says it heartily — " I see no earthly 
 reason why you should not go ; you could 
 not make nicer friends." 
 
 "Then why will not you come too?" 
 asks Byng, with boyish generosity. 
 
 The other shakes his head. " They
 
 144 ALAS! 
 
 had much rather I stayed away ; they 
 have taken me en grippe" 
 
 " Pooh ! Nonsense ! You fancy it." 
 
 " I think not " — speaking slowly and 
 thoughtfully — " I am not a fanciful person, 
 nor apt to imagine that my acquaintances 
 bother their heads about me one way or 
 another ; but when people try their best, 
 in the first instance, to avoid recognising 
 you at all, and on every subsequent 
 occasion endeavour to disappear as soon 
 as you come in sight, it is not a very 
 forced assumption that they are not 
 exactly greedy for your society." 
 
 This reasoning is so close that Byng 
 is for the moment silenced ; and it is 
 the other who shortly resumes : 
 
 " I think it is because I remind them 
 of the past ; they have evidently some 
 unpleasant association of ideas with that 
 past. I wonder what it is." 
 
 The latter clause is addressed more to 
 himself than to Byng. 
 
 " Perhaps some of them have died, or 
 come to grief, and they are afraid of your
 
 AMELIA. 145 
 
 asking after them," suggests the younger 
 man. 
 
 " On the contrary — they are all — one 
 more flourishing than another." 
 
 " Well, I would give them one more 
 trial, anyhow ; I am sure they would come 
 round. Give them time, and I am sure 
 they would come round !" cries Byng 
 sanguinely ; adding, " What could have 
 been pleasanter than Mrs. Le Marchant's 
 manner when you presented her to Miss 
 Wilson ?" 
 
 The mention of Miss Wilson recalls to 
 Jim the extremely unpleasant moment of 
 that presentation, thus brought back to 
 him — the moment when Amelia had 
 looked so middle-aged, and Cecilia so 
 flashy ; recalls to him also the convic- 
 tion that has been growing upon him 
 since yesterday, of the more than wisdom, 
 the absolute imperative duty on his part, 
 of avoiding a repetition of that comparison 
 which had forced itself upon his notice 
 in the church of San Miniato. 
 
 "You had better come," persists Byng 
 
 vol. 1. 10
 
 146 ALAS! 
 
 still, like a magnanimous child holding out 
 half his cake to his friend ; whether, like 
 the same child, with a semi-hope that it 
 may be refused, or whether, on the other 
 hand, it may have crossed his mind that, 
 where there are two visitees, the chances 
 of a tSte-a-tete are improved by there 
 being also two visitors. 
 
 " My dear boy," returns Jim, this time 
 with a testiness handsomely streaked with 
 irony, " you are really too obliging ; but, 
 even if I wished it — which I do not — or 
 even if they wished it — which they do not 
 — it is in this case quite impossible, as I 
 am engaged to go shopping with Amelia." 
 
 Probably the blow is not a knockdown 
 one to Byng ; at all events, he bears the 
 rebuff with his habitual healthy good 
 temper, and goes off to put on a smarter 
 tie. Burgoyne, thinking no such improve- 
 ment in his toilette necessary, strolls away 
 to the Anglo- Americain. It is true that 
 he has covenanted to escort Amelia to 
 the shop for Cantagalli ware, though there 
 is no particular reason why, had he so
 
 AMELIA. 147 
 
 wished it, the purchase of the dinner- 
 service that is to grace their Bayswater 
 symposia might not have been deferred 
 for twenty-four hours ; and indeed, as 
 things turn out, it has to be so de- 
 ferred. 
 
 As he opens the door of the Wilson 
 sitting - room his future father - in - law 
 brushes past him, with evident signs of 
 discomposure all over his clerical figure 
 and spectacled face ; and on entering, he 
 finds equal, if not superior, marks of upset 
 equanimity on the countenances of the 
 three women that are the room's occupants. 
 Over the wood fire — Sybilla alternately 
 roasts and freezes her family, and this is 
 one of her roasting days — Cecilia is stoop- 
 ing, in evident search for some object that 
 has been committed, or tried to be com- 
 mitted, to the flames. The other two are 
 looking on with an air of vexed interest. 
 Sybilla is the first to address him. 
 
 " You have appeared at a not very 
 happy moment," she says, with a sigh ; 
 " we have been having a family breeze ; it 
 
 10 — 2
 
 148 ALAS! 
 
 has sent my temperature up nicely ! It is 
 ioo, ioo, Point 2." 
 
 The mention of Sybilla's temperature is 
 always enough to put Jim in a rage. It is 
 therefore in no very feeling tone that he 
 returns : 
 
 "If it were 1,000, Point 99, I should 
 not be surprised, in this atmosphere ! 
 Good Heavens, Cis, are not you hot 
 enough already ?" 
 
 The young lady thus apostrophised rises, 
 with some precipitation, and with a very 
 heated complexion, from her knees, holding 
 in her hand, however, the object of her 
 quest — a rather charred small parcel, done 
 up in white paper, and with a fragment 
 of white ribbon still adhering here and 
 there to it. 
 
 " Father behaves so childishly," she says, 
 with irritated undutifulness. 
 
 " You must own that it was enough to 
 provoke him," strikes in Amelia's mild voice. 
 
 " What was enough to provoke him ? 
 How has he shown his childishness ? For 
 Heaven's sake, some of you explain !"
 
 AMELIA. 149 
 
 cries Jim impatiently, looking from one to 
 the other. 
 
 But with this request none of the three 
 appears in any hurry to comply. There is 
 a distinct pause before Cecilia, seeing that 
 neither of her seniors shows any signs of 
 relieving her of the burden of explanation, 
 takes that burden upon herself. 
 
 " The fact is," she says, setting her little 
 rescued packet on the table beside her, and 
 beginning to fan herself, " that Mr. Dash- 
 wood, the man to whom I was engaged, 
 has chosen to marry. I am sure " — with a 
 shrug — " no one has the least desire to 
 deny his perfect right to do so ; and this 
 morning there arrived by post a bit of his 
 wedding-cake ! I suppose he meant it 
 civilly ; but father chose to take it as 
 an insult to himself, and though it was 
 addressed to me, he threw it into the fire. 
 I am very fond of wedding-cake ; so, 
 as soon as father's back was turned, I 
 fished it out again ! ' 
 
 Jim laughs, with more vigour perhaps 
 than heartfelt amusement.
 
 5© ALAS/ 
 
 " Bravo, Cis ! You are a real philo- 
 sopher ! We might all learn a lesson from 
 you." 
 
 "What have you done with your nice 
 friend ?" asked Sybilla languidly. " Amelia, 
 dear, this couvre-pied is slipping off me 
 again. What a sympathetic voice he has ! 
 I am sure he has been a great deal with 
 sick people." 
 
 " I left him putting on his best tie to go 
 out calling. No, calm yourself, Cecilia, 
 not on you ; it is not your turn to-day." 
 
 " Whose turn is it, then ?" asks the girl, 
 with an interest not at all blunted by the 
 mortifying incident of the cake, which, 
 indeed, she has begun to nibble with ap- 
 parent relish. 
 
 Jim hesitates a second — a second during 
 which it strikes him with a shock that 
 he already finds a difficulty in pronounc- 
 ing Elizabeth Le Marchant's name. He 
 manages to evade the necessity even now 
 by a circumlocution. 
 
 " I believe it is the Piazza d'Azeglio 
 upon which that luminary is to shine."
 
 AMELIA. 151 
 
 " Is he going to see that lovely creature 
 to whom you introduced me yesterday ?" 
 cries Amelia, with good-natured enthu- 
 siasm. " I heard her telling him that she 
 lived in the Piazza d'Azeglio. Oh, Jim, 
 how pretty she is ! One ought to pay for 
 being allowed to look at her." 
 
 Many women, whose plainness is incon- 
 testable, are able to be just to their better 
 favoured sisters ; but x\melia is more than 
 just — she is lavishly generous. 
 
 Burgoyne rewards herwith an affectionate 
 look — a look such as would make her swear 
 that, beside Miss Le Marchant, as beside 
 Dumain's fair love, 
 
 " Juno but an Ethiop were !" 
 
 " She looks as if she had had a history ; 
 that always improves a woman's appear- 
 ance," says Cecilia pensively, holding a 
 fragment of the fateful cake suspended 
 in air, and regarding it with a melancholy 
 eye. " Has she ?" 
 
 " I never asked her." 
 
 " Why did not you go too ?" inquires
 
 152 ALAS! 
 
 Amelia, judiciously striking in, as is her 
 habit, as often as she perceives that her 
 younger sister is beginning to get too 
 obviously upon her own fiances nerves ; a 
 catastrophe which something in the tone 
 of his last remark tells her — though she 
 does not quite understand why it should — 
 is imminent. " They are old friends of 
 yours, are not they ? They may be hurt 
 if they find that a perfect stranger like 
 Mr. Byng is in a greater hurry to visit 
 them than you are." 
 
 Before Burgoyne's mental vision rises a 
 picture of Elizabeth's heavenly eye wander- 
 ing indifferently over the dear old friend's 
 shoulder to find its home in that of the 
 perfect stranger. But he says kindly, and 
 even playfully : 
 
 " Why did not I go too ? Because I 
 was under the impression that I was 
 engaged to go with another lovely being 
 to choose crockery, was I not ? Am I 
 not ?" 
 
 Amelia's answer is conveyed by a series 
 of nods and winks executed behind her
 
 AMELIA 
 
 i53 
 
 sisters' backs, which he presently under- 
 stands to imply that she desires a private 
 interview. It is not immediately that he 
 grasps what she is driving at, since dumb- 
 show is often puzzling to the person at 
 whom it is aimed, though clear as day to 
 the dumb-shower. As soon, however, as 
 he masters what her wish is, he hastens to 
 comply with it ; and five minutes later 
 finds them tete-a-tete in the hideous little 
 dining-room which had been the scene 
 of their reunion, and of many after-meet- 
 ings. 
 
 " I could not say so, of course, before 
 her" remarks Miss Wilson, as soon as they 
 are out of earshot, " or she might have 
 insisted upon my going. She is very un- 
 selfish sometimes ; but the fact is, I do 
 not think I ought to leave Sybilla again 
 to-day. You see, she was alone the whole 
 of yesterday afternoon ; and when we 
 came back we found her in a very low 
 way. She had been reading her book 
 of prescriptions — you know the book ; all 
 the prescriptions which she has had for
 
 154 ALAS! 
 
 the last ten years bound up together — 
 and we rather dread her bringing it 
 out, as she always fancies that she is 
 going to have the disease prescribed 
 for." 
 
 " Humph !" 
 
 " And, after all, happiness ought not to 
 make one selfish, ought it ?" says Amelia, 
 with a gentle sigh of abnegation, as she 
 ruffles her pale-haired head against his 
 coat-sleeve. " I have so much of you 
 now — oh, so much ! — not to speak of " 
 
 " Cecilia, of course, is incapacitated by 
 grief?" interrupts Jim brusquely. "She 
 will be going up and down upon the 
 mountains like another unfortunate fair 
 one. But your father ? He will be at 
 home, will he not ?" 
 
 " Yes, he will be at home," replies 
 Amelia, slowly and doubtfully, as if not 
 finding a very satisfactory solution in this 
 suggested arrangement ; " but, as you 
 know, it never answers to leave father 
 and Sybilla alone together for long. You 
 see, he does not believe that there is any-
 
 AMELIA. 155 
 
 thing the matter with her ; he thinks that 
 she is as well as you or I " (a gush of 
 warm feeling towards his father - in - law 
 rushes over Jim's heart) ; "and though he 
 tries to prevent himself from showing it 
 to her, yet I am afraid, poor dear, that 
 he is not very successful." 
 
 Jim laughs. 
 
 "And to-day," continues Amelia, "he 
 is naturally a good deal upset about 
 Cecilia and that wedding-cake ; it was 
 very impertinent to send it — was not it ? — 
 though she does not seem to see it. I 
 hope " — with a wistful smile, and a repeti- 
 tion of the fond friction of her head 
 against his sleeve — "that when yon throw 
 me over " 
 
 This is a hypothesis, suggested with 
 perhaps unwise frequency by poor Miss 
 Wilson, which never fails to exasperate 
 Jim. 
 
 "If we are going to talk nonsense," he 
 breaks in brusquely, and with no attempt 
 to return or reward her caressing gesture, 
 " I may as well go."
 
 156 ALAS! 
 
 " Go to the Piazza d'Azeglio," says she 
 coaxingly, her spirits raised by the harsh- 
 ness of tone of his interruption of her 
 speech, and half persuading herself that 
 it owes its birth to the supposition being 
 too painful to be faced by him. 
 
 He looks at her strangely for a moment, 
 then — ''Why do you wish me to go to 
 the Piazza d'Azeglio ?" he asks, in a tone 
 that is no longer overtly cross, only con- 
 strained and odd. " Why are you driving 
 me there ?" 
 
 " Because I think you would like it," 
 she answers ; " because" — taking his hand 
 and passing her lips, which he feels to be 
 trembling a little, very gently over the 
 back of it — " because all through your 
 life I want you to have exactly what 
 you like, always." 
 
 He draws his hand away ; not unkindly, 
 but as if shocked at the humility of her 
 action. 
 
 "That is so likely," he says mourn- 
 fully.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 There is no particular mirth in Bur- 
 goyne's mind as he mounts the stone 
 stairs of the house which announces itself 
 as 12 bis, in the commonplace new square 
 of the Piazza cTAzeglio. But yet it is 
 evident that, if he wishes to be in tune 
 with the mood of the family to whom he 
 is going to pay his respects, he must be 
 not only mirthful, but musical. As the 
 door of the entresol, to which he is 
 directed by the porter, opens in answer 
 to his ring, bursts of laughter, among 
 which he can plainly detect the voice of 
 Byng, assail his ear, mingled with music, 
 or rather noise of a sort, but what sort his 
 ear, without fuller evidence than is vet
 
 158 ALAS! 
 
 before it, is unable to decide. The 
 person who has admitted him is an 
 elderly Englishwoman, whose features at 
 once strike him as familiar — so familiar 
 that it needs scarcely one reaching back 
 of memory's hand to capture the fact of 
 her having filled the office of nurse at the 
 Moat, at the period when the nursery 
 there had been the scene of those frantic 
 romps in which he himself had taken a 
 prominent part, and in which Elizabeth 
 had been to him by turns so able a second, 
 or so vigorous an adversary. He would like 
 to claim acquaintance with her, and, per- 
 haps, if she had made any difficulty as to 
 admitting him, might have screwed up his 
 courage to do so ; but as she lets him in 
 without delay or hesitation, he follows her 
 in silence along the passage of a by no 
 means imposing little entresol — they are 
 not so well off as they used to be, is his 
 passing thought — is ushered into a small 
 sitting-room, and, entering behind his 
 own name, which has been completely 
 drowned by the din issuing from within,
 
 AMELIA. 159 
 
 has time, before the consciousness of his 
 own appearance has disturbed it, to take 
 in the details of a group which his entry 
 naturally breaks up. Set slantwise across 
 one angle of the room is an open cottage- 
 piano, and beside it stands Elizabeth, her 
 elbow resting on the top, and all her 
 pensive face convulsed with helpless 
 laughter. Upon the music - stool is 
 seated a large collie dog, supported from 
 behind in an upright position by Byng. 
 Before him is a score of music, from which 
 he is obviously supposed to be playing, as 
 indeed he is doing in a sense — that is to 
 say, he is bringing down first one large 
 paw and then another heavily on the keys, 
 accompanying each crash with a short howl 
 to express the agony inflicted upon his 
 nerves by his own performance. The 
 scene is so entirely different a one from 
 what he had expected : the immoderately 
 laughing Elizabeth has so much more 
 kinship with the sweet hoyden of the Moat 
 than with the pale woman with a history of 
 his two last meetings, that for a second or
 
 160 ALAS/ 
 
 two Burgoyne stands in the doorway as 
 if stunned. It is not till Mrs. Le Marchant, 
 coming out of an inner room, advances 
 to greet him, that he recovers himself. 
 
 " How do you do ?" she says, smiling, 
 and with less constraint than he has of 
 late learnt to expect. " Are you fond of 
 music ?" (putting, as she speaks, her hands 
 up to her ears). " I hope so! Did you 
 ever hear such a shocking noise ?" 
 
 " I do not know which I admire most, 
 the vocal or the instrumental part of the 
 performance," replies he, laughing; but 
 even as he speaks both cease. 
 
 Elizabeth lifts her elbow from the piano, 
 and Byng removes his hands from under 
 the dog's arms, who at once, joyful and 
 released, jumps down, upsetting his music- 
 stool with the impetus of his descent, and 
 yet immediately, with all a dog's real good- 
 heartedness, begins to swing a handsome 
 tail, to show that he bears no real malice 
 for the odious practical joke that has been 
 played upon him. The clamorous fall of 
 dog and music-stool reveals an object which
 
 AMELIA. 1 61 
 
 had been hidden behind both, in the shape 
 of a little boy, in whose behalf, as it darts 
 across Jim's mind, the eccentric concert, 
 for which he has come in, must have been 
 got up. 
 
 " Oh, do go on !" cries the child shrilly. 
 " Oh, do make him do it again ! Oh, 
 why do you stop ?" 
 
 And indeed through the whole of the 
 ensuing conversation this crv recurs at 
 short intervals with the iteration of a 
 guinea-hen. But hone of the three per- 
 formers seems disposed to comply with this 
 request. Two of them sit down decorously 
 on chairs, and the third throws himself 
 upon the floor panting, showing a tine red 
 tongue, and dragging himself luxuriously 
 along on his stomach to show his relief at 
 his coi'tt being ended. The child has 
 followed Elizabeth, and now stands beside 
 her, tiresomely pulling at her white hands. 
 
 11 Bertie has come to spend the day with 
 us." she says, looking explanatorily up at 
 Jim, but speaking with a formality very* 
 different, as he feels, from the exuberant 
 
 vol. 1. 1 1
 
 162 ALAS/ 
 
 ease and mirth that had marked her inter- 
 course with Byng. 
 
 Jim had already had a flash of specula- 
 tion about the child, as to whether he 
 might be a late-come little brother, arrived 
 on the scene at a period subsequent to 
 his own connection with the family ; since 
 plainly the span of his small life did not 
 stretch to a decade. 
 
 " Bertie is a new friend," he says kindly. 
 " I do not know Bertie." 
 
 "His mother, Mrs. Roche, is a cousin 
 of ours ; she has a villa on Bellosguardo. 
 Perhaps you know her ?" 
 
 " I am going to a party at her house on 
 Wednesday," cries Jim, in a tone of eager 
 pleasure at the discovery of this fresh 
 link, and of the vista of probable meetings 
 which it opens up. "I shall meet you 
 there ?" 
 
 Elizabeth turns her head slightly aside 
 and shakes it as slightly. 
 
 " No ?" 
 
 " We are not going out." 
 
 The formula implies mourning, and yet
 
 AMELIA. 163 
 
 the clothes both of Elizabeth and her 
 mother are unmistakably coloured ones, 
 and give no indication of an even moderately- 
 recent loss. But it is so clear that Miss 
 Le Marchant means to add no explanation 
 that he has to change the subject. 
 
 11 Though Bertie is not an old friend/ 
 he says, smiling, " yet I have come across 
 one here to-day — she opened the door 
 to me ; I should have liked to shake hands 
 with her, only she looked so haughty — she 
 never used to look haughty at the Moat." 
 
 " Do you mean nurse ?" she asks. 
 
 " Yes, I knew her in an instant ; she is 
 not in the least changed, less even " — 
 hesitating a little, as if doubtful whether 
 the stiffness of their new relations warranted 
 a personality — " less even than you." 
 
 She snatches a hasty look at him, a 
 look upon which he sees, to his surprise, 
 imprinted a character of almost fear. 
 
 " You must be laughing at me," she says, 
 in a voice in which he detects an undoubted 
 tremor ; " I am very much changed." 
 
 There is such obvious apprehension in 
 
 1 1 — 2
 
 164 ALAS/ 
 
 her whole manner, that his one thought — 
 after a first flash of astonishment — is to 
 reassure her. 
 
 " Of course I was only speaking of 
 externals," he says quickly ; " ten years 
 could hardly be expected to leave any of 
 us quite where we were as to our inner 
 selves ;" then, seeing her still look flurried, 
 and becoming himself nervous, he adds, 
 rather stupidly, the hackneyed Swinburnian 
 couplet — 
 
 " ' Time turns the old days to derision, 
 Our loves into corpses or wives !' 
 
 though I never could see that that was 
 quite a necessary alternative !" 
 
 Ere the words are out of his mouth she 
 has risen with precipitation, and begun 
 hurriedly to re-arrange the branches of 
 lilac in a scaldino on the table near her. 
 She is apparently so awkward about it 
 that one odorous white bough falls out 
 on the floor. Before Jim can stoop to pick 
 it up, Byng has rushed to the rescue. 
 In eagerly thanking him, in receiving it
 
 AMELIA. 165 
 
 back from him, and accepting his services 
 in replacing it among its perfumed brothers, 
 the girl, perhaps involuntarily, turns her 
 back upon her former interlocutor, who 
 sits for a moment staring rather blankly 
 at her, and wondering what sting there 
 could have lurked in his apparently harm- 
 less words to drive her away so abruptly. 
 Whatever may have driven her away, 
 there is certainly no doubt as to her 
 being gone. Nor as Jim sees her moving 
 about the room, followed by Byng, and 
 showing him her treasures — the little wild 
 red and yellow tulips she plucked in the 
 field this morning ; the chicken-skin box 
 she bought at Ciampolini's yesterday, and 
 mixing all that she shows with her delicate 
 light laughter — can he buoy himself up 
 with any reasonable hope of her ever, with 
 her own good will, returning. He must 
 be looking more blank than he is con- 
 scious of, for Mrs. Le Marchant's voice 
 sounds quite apologetic in his ears, when, 
 having been, like himself, deserted by her 
 companion, she takes a seat near him.
 
 166 ALAS! 
 
 " Elizabeth is so proud of her bargains," 
 she says, glancing with a lenient smile 
 towards her daughter; "she must show 
 them to everybody." 
 
 11 She never offered to show them to 
 me," replies Jim, rather morosely ; then, 
 becoming aware of the almost puerile 
 jealousy evidenced by his last remark, 
 he adds : 
 
 11 I am afraid I said something that 
 annoyed Miss Le Marchant ; I cannot 
 think what it could have been. I told 
 her how wonderfully little changed I 
 thought her in the last ten years ; but 
 it could not have been that, could it ?" 
 
 The mother's eye is still following her 
 child, and, if it were not an absurd 
 assumption, Burgoyne could have fancied 
 that there was a sudden moisture in it. 
 
 "She is very sensitive," Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant answers slowly; "perhaps it would 
 be safer not to say anything about herself 
 to her." 
 
 11 Perhaps it would be safer," rejoins 
 Jim, with some ill-humour, "if you were
 
 AMELIA. 167 
 
 to draw up a list of subjects for me to 
 avoid ; I have no wish to play the part 
 of bull in a china shop ; and yet I seem 
 to be always doing it; imprimis" (striking 
 the forefinger of his left hand with the 
 right), "imprimis the Moat." 
 
 He pauses, as if expecting a disclaimer, 
 but none such comes — " The past gene- 
 rally" (moving on to the second finger 
 and again halting ; but with no more 
 result than before). ''Yourselves" (reach- 
 ing the third finger). Still that silence, 
 which, if it mean anything, must mean 
 assent. He looks impatiently in her 
 face, to seek the response which her 
 lips refuse him. 
 
 "On your own showing," she says 
 gently, though in a rather troubled 
 voice, "you have the whole field of the 
 present and the future left you ; are not 
 they wide enough for you ?" 
 
 His brows draw together into a painful 
 frown. 
 
 " Perhaps I have as little cause to be 
 fond of them as vou have of the past."
 
 168 ALAS! 
 
 It is a random shot, a bow drawn at 
 a venture ; but it could not have hit more 
 true apparently had it been levelled with 
 the nicest aim. 
 
 As her daughter had done before her, 
 Mrs. Le Marchant rises hastily, and leaves 
 him — leaves him to reflect ironically upon 
 how wisely Amelia had acted in insisting 
 upon his visiting these " dear old friends," 
 upon whom the effect of his conversation 
 is so obviously exhilarating. 
 
 " I wish I had not come ; I wish it was 
 time to go home !" 
 
 The small fractious voice that wails the 
 two preceding sentences seems to be Jim's 
 own mouthpiece. It is, in point of fact, 
 the voice of Bertie, who, tired of uttering 
 his unregarded request for the repetition 
 of the concert which had filled him with 
 such delight, has of late been trying the 
 effect of his unassisted powers to bring 
 about the desired consummation, by put- 
 ting his arms as far as he can round the 
 dog's body, and endeavouring to lug him 
 towards the music-stool. The collie has
 
 AMELIA. 169 
 
 been enduring this treatment for five 
 minutes — enduring it with an expression 
 of magnanimous patience, which seems to 
 say, that, though it is undoubtedly an 
 unpleasant experience, yet, as it is inflicted 
 upon him by one of his own family, he 
 must of course put up with it, when 
 Elizabeth goes to the rescue. Elizabeth 
 goes alone, since Byng is held in converse 
 by her mother at the other side of the 
 room. Verbal persuasions having entirely 
 failed, she tries to loosen the child's arms ; 
 but his grasp, though puny, is obstinate, 
 and the only perceptible result of her 
 endeavours is the utterance by her young 
 friend of the two polite aspirations above 
 recorded. 
 
 " He does not want to sing any more to- 
 day," Jim hears her saying in her gentle 
 voice; "you really are hurting him; he 
 is too polite to say so ; but you are squeezing 
 him so tight that you really are hurting 
 him. Why now " (with a little accent of 
 pain), "you are hurting me." 
 
 Jim has been looking with a lack-lustre
 
 7 o ALAS! 
 
 eye out of the open window at the young 
 plane trees exchanging their frowsy buds 
 for infant leaves ; at the one Judas tree 
 pranking in its purple blossoms in the 
 Piazza ; but at that low complaint he makes 
 one step across the room, and, whipping 
 off Master Bertie alike from long-enduring 
 dog and plaintive woman, stoops over the 
 latter as she sits upon the floor, passing 
 one hand over the other, upon which the 
 child's angry fingers, transferred from his 
 first victim, have left rosy prints of 
 pain. 
 
 " I wish I had not come ; I wish it was 
 time to go home !" whimpers the little 
 boy. 
 
 " Since he is so anxious to go home, 
 I will take him, if you like," says Jim in 
 a stiff voice ; " I must be going myself." 
 
 She looks up at him from her lowly 
 posture, a charming, half-apologetic, wholly 
 peace-making smile fleeting across her 
 small face, while she still chafes her hand 
 — that little pinched hand which makes 
 him feel so ridiculously tender.
 
 AMELIA. 171 
 
 " Are you, too, sorry that you came ?" 
 she asks. 
 
 The question takes him by surprise. 
 He is not prepared for so friendly and 
 almost intimate a sequel to her short, 
 shy answers, and her abrupt quitting of 
 him. He hesitates how to answer it ; and 
 as he hesitates, she rises and stands beside 
 him. It is not easy for a grown person to 
 rise gracefully from a seat on the floor. 
 Jim catches himself thinking with what 
 a roll and a flounder Cecilia would have 
 executed the same manoeuvre ; but Eliza- 
 beth, supple and light, rises as smoothly 
 as an exhalation from a summer meadow. 
 
 " If I was rude to you just now," she 
 
 says, rather tremulously ; "if I am ever 
 
 rude to you in the future, I hope you will 
 
 understand — I hope you will put it down 
 
 to the fact that I — I — am very ignorant 
 
 of — that I know very little of the world." 
 # # # # # 
 
 The two men are gone ; so is the child ; 
 so is the dog ; and Elizabeth is shutting 
 up the piano and removing the score.
 
 "What a noise we made!" she says, 
 smiling at the recollection. 
 
 "If you make such a shocking noise 
 again, the signora and the other lodgers 
 will infallibly interfere." 
 
 Mrs. Le Marchant has followed her 
 daughter, and now throws one arm about 
 her slight neck, with a gesture of passionate 
 affection. 
 
 ** If you knew." she says, in a voice 
 of deep and happy agitation, " what it was 
 to me to hear vou laugh as you did to- 
 day 
 
 •• I have a good many arrears in that 
 way to make up, have not I, mammy ? 
 And so have you too," answers the younger 
 woman, laying her sleek head down car 
 ingly on her mother s shoulder ; then, in 
 a changed and restless voice : " Oh, if we 
 could stop that man talking about the 
 Moat ! Why does he go on hammering 
 about it 
 
 ** Why indeed ?' ? replies Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant with a shrug. "Men are so thick- 
 ened ; but it is rather touching, his
 
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 CHAPTER XI, 
 
 A reconciliation is seldom effected with- 
 out some price being paid for it. Jim's 
 with Elizabeth, if it can be called such, is 
 bought at the cost of a small sacrifice of 
 principle on his part. No later than this 
 morning he had laid it down as a Median 
 rule that he should avoid opportunities of 
 finding himself in Miss Le Marchant's 
 company ; and yet, not only has he spent 
 the major part of the afternoon in her 
 society, but, as he walks away from her 
 door, he finds that he has engaged himself 
 to help Byng, on no distant day, in doing 
 the honours of the Certosa Monastery 
 to her and her mother. On reflection, 
 he cannot quite explain to himself how the
 
 AMELIA. 175 
 
 arrangement has come about. The pro- 
 posal certainly did not originate with him, 
 and still less with the two ladies so strangely- 
 shy of all society. The three have somehow 
 been swept into it by Byng, who, either 
 with the noblest altruism, or because he 
 feels justly confident that he has no cause 
 for jealousy of his friend (Jim's cynical 
 reflection is that the latter is the much 
 more probable reason), has insisted on 
 drawing him into the project. 
 
 Jim Burgoyne is not a man whom, as 
 a rule, it is easy either to wile or cudgel 
 into any course that does not recommend 
 itself to his own judgment or taste — a fact 
 of which he himself is perfectly aware, 
 and which makes him remorsefully acknow- 
 ledge that there must indeed have been 
 a traitor in the citadel of his own heart 
 before he could have so weakly yielded at 
 the first push to what his reason sincerely 
 disapproves. But yet it is not true that 
 remorse is the leading feature of his 
 thoughts, as he walks silently beside his 
 friend down the Via di Servi. It ought
 
 176 ALAS. f 
 
 to be. perhaps ; but it is not. The picture 
 that holds the foreground of his memory 
 is that of Elizabeth sitting on the floor, 
 and sending him peace-offerings from her 
 pathetic eyes and across her sensitive lips. 
 It was very sweet of her to think it neces- 
 sary to make him amends at all for her 
 trifling incivility, and nothing could be 
 sweeter than the manner of it. How 
 gladly would he buy some little rudeness 
 from her even* day at such a price ! But 
 yet, as he thinks it over, the manner of 
 it, the ground on which she rested her 
 excuse, is surely a strange one. That 
 she should attribute her light lapse from 
 courtesy to want of knowledge of the 
 world comes strangely from the mouth of 
 a woman of six-and-twenty. If it be true 
 — and there was a naive veracity in lip and 
 eye as she spoke — how is it to be accounted 
 for ? Has her mind, has her experience of 
 life, remained absolutely stationary during 
 the last ten years? Her tell-tale face, 
 over which some pensive story is so plainly 
 written, forbids the inference. It is no
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 business of his, of course. Amelia, thank 
 Heaven! has no story : but. oh! if some- 
 one would tell him what that history 
 And yet, three days later, he voluntarily 
 puts away from himself the opportunity of 
 hearing it. 
 
 During those three days he sees no 
 more of her. He does not again seek her 
 out, and accident does not throw her in 
 his way. He buys his Cantagalli dinner- 
 service in company with Amelia: cho: 
 the soup-tureen out of which he is to ladle 
 mutton broth for the inhabitants of West- 
 bourne Grove ; he tastes of the wedding- 
 cake that has cost Cecilia so dear, and he 
 avoids Bvnsr. On the third dav he can no 
 longer avoid him. since he is to occupy, as 
 on the San Miniato occasion, the fourth 
 seat in the fiacre which convevs himself 
 and the Misses Wilson to the garden-pr- 
 at the villa in Bellosoruardo inhabited bv 
 Mrs. Roche, the mother of the amiable 
 Bertie. The Wilsons' acquaintances in 
 Florence are few, and. as far as Burgoyne 
 has at present had the opportunity of 
 i. : :
 
 17S ALAS/ 
 
 judging, evil. It is, therefore, with a 
 proportionate elation that Cecilia dresses 
 for a party at which she will meet the 
 bulk, or at least the cream, of the English 
 society. It is to Byng's good nature that 
 she and her sister owe the introduction to 
 a hostess whose acquaintance is already 
 too large to make her eager for any cause- 
 less addition to it ; but whose hand has 
 been forced by Byng, in the mistaken idea 
 that he is doing a service to his friend 
 Jim. 
 
 They are late in setting off, as Amelia 
 is delayed by the necessity of soothing 
 Sybilla, who has been reduced to bitter 
 tears by a tete-a-tete with her father, in 
 which that well-intentioned but incautious 
 gentleman has been betrayed into suggest- 
 ing to her that she may possibly be 
 suffering from biliousness. The adminis- 
 tering of bromide, to calm her nerves 
 under such a shock ; the reiterated assur- 
 ances that every member of the family 
 except its head realizes the monstrosity 
 of the suggestion, take up so much time
 
 AMELIA. 179 
 
 that Amelia herself has to reduce to a 
 minimum the moments allotted to her own 
 toilette. She has cried a little with Sybilla, 
 for company partly, and partly out of weari- 
 ness of spirit. That and hurry have swollen 
 her eyelids, and painted her cheeks with a 
 hard, tired red, so that it is an even more 
 homespun figure and a homelier face than 
 usual, that seat themselves opposite Bur- 
 goyne, when at length they get under 
 weigh. 
 
 He, Burgoyne, has been impatient of 
 the delay, impatient to set off and to 
 arrive ; yet he would be puzzled to say 
 why. He knows, on no less authority 
 than her own word, that he shall not meet 
 Elizabeth ; and yet the mere feeling that 
 the mistress of the house to which he is 
 going is of the same blood as she ; that he 
 shall see the rude, spoilt child, whose ill- 
 tempered pinch made her utter that low 
 cry of pain, suffice to give a tartness to 
 his tone, as he inquires the cause of her 
 lagging, of the panting, flushed, apologetic 
 Amelia. Byng and Cecilia have been 
 
 12 — 2
 
 180 ALAS! 
 
 sitting waiting for some time in the salon, 
 from which Sybilla has removed her 
 prostrate figure and tear-stained face ; but 
 they have been entertaining each other 
 so well — she in paying him a series of 
 marked attentions, and he in civilly and 
 pleasantly accepting them — that the half- 
 hour has not seemed long to either. But 
 the party, in motion at last, has passed the 
 Roman Gate, and is climbing up and up 
 between the high walls, each step giving it 
 a greater vantage ground over the Flower 
 City, before Burgoyne recovers his equa- 
 nimity. 
 
 The spring comes on apace. In the 
 gardens above their heads laurestinus 
 bushes, with all their flowers out (as they 
 are never seen in England, where always 
 the east wind nips half the little round 
 buds before they can expand into blossom), 
 stand in white and green ; rosemary trees, 
 covered with gray bloom, hang down ; and 
 against the azure of the high heaven purple 
 irides stand up arow. It is one of those 
 days on which one can with bodily eyes
 
 'ELI A. i Si 
 
 see the Great Mother at her quickening 
 work ; can see her flushing the apple- 
 boughs, unfolding the fig - leaves, and 
 driving the lusty green blood through the 
 sappy vines. And in the slow creeping of 
 the fiacre up the twisting white road, each 
 turn lays the divine Tuscan city before 
 them in some new aspect of arresting 
 loveliness. 
 
 At Florence, one is like Balaam with 
 the Israelites. One is taken to see her 
 from one point after another, each point 
 seeming fairer than the last ; but the like- 
 ness ends there, for no wish to curse the 
 sweet town could ever arise in even the 
 morosest heart. The hills have put on 
 their summer look of dreamy warmth and 
 distance. Before they have reached the 
 hill-top the boon Italian air has kissed 
 most of the creases out of Jim's temper, 
 and the brick-red from Amelia's cheek- 
 bones. He looks remorsefully from the 
 triumphant beauty around, into the poor, 
 fond face opposite to him — looks at her 
 with a sort of compassion for being so un-
 
 i82 ALAS! 
 
 lovely, mixed with a compunctious admira- 
 tion and tenderness for her gentle qualities. 
 He may touch her hand without fear of 
 observation, so wholly is Byng enveloped 
 in the mantle of Cecilia's voluble tender- 
 ness. 
 
 " Have you forgiven me ?" he asks, 
 smiling ; "I will make any apologies, eat 
 any dirt, say anything, short of allowing 
 that Sybilla is not bilious." 
 
 They have reached the villa, and turned 
 out of the dusty highway into a great cool 
 courtyard, that has a Moorish look, with 
 its high arches, over which the Banksia 
 roses tumble in cascades of yellow and 
 white. It seems wrong that the voices 
 which come from the tea-tables under the 
 Loggia should be chattering English or 
 Yankee, instead of cooing that " sweet 
 bastard Latin " that better suits place and 
 day. 
 
 The hostess shakes hands absently with 
 Burgoyne, offers his fair charges iced 
 coffee, and then, having discharged her 
 conscience towards them, draws Byng
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 away for an intimate chat. From her 
 hands he passes into those of several other 
 willing matrons and maids, and it seems 
 likely that the party who brought him will 
 see him no more. Amelia, unused to, and 
 unexpectant of attention, is perfectly con- 
 tent to sit silent, sipping her cold coffee ; 
 but Cecilia is champing her bit in a way 
 which frightens her future brother-in-law 
 so much that he cowardly takes the oppor- 
 tunity of her looking in another direction 
 to lure his docile fiancie on to the broad 
 terrace, whence all the young green glory 
 of the Arno's plain, and the empurpled 
 slopes and dreamful breast of Morello, are 
 to be seen by the looker's beauty-drunk 
 eye. Upon this terrace many people are 
 walking and sitting in twos and threes, and 
 in one of the little groups Amelia presently 
 discovers a female acquaintance, who at 
 once fastens upon her, and happening to 
 be afflicted with a relative visited by a 
 disorder of something the same nature as 
 Sybilla's, subjects her to a searching and 
 exhaustive catechism as to the nature of
 
 184 ALAS! 
 
 her sister's symptoms. Sybilla's symptoms, 
 whether at first or second hand, have in- 
 variably the property of driving Jim into 
 desert places ; and, in the present instance, 
 seeing no likelihood of an end to the rela- 
 tion of them, he turns impatiently away, 
 and, without much thought of where he is 
 going, follows a steep downward path that 
 ends in a descent of old stone steps, be- 
 tween whose crevices green plants and 
 little hawkweed blow-balls flourish undis- 
 turbed, to a large square well, framed by a 
 low broad parapet, with flower-beds set 
 around it, and the whole closed in by 
 rugged stone walls. No one apparently 
 has had the same impulse as he, for, at 
 first, he has the cool solitude to himself. 
 He sits down on the parapet of the still 
 well, and drops in pebbles to see how deep 
 the water is ; and anon lifts his idle look to 
 the empty niches in the crumbling wall — 
 niches where once wood-god, or water- 
 nymph, or rural Pan stood in stone, now 
 empty and forsaken. Out of the wall two 
 ilexes grow, and lift themselves against the
 
 AMELIA. 185 
 
 sapphire arch, which yet is no sapphire, nor 
 of any name that belongs to cold stone ; a 
 blue by which all other blues are but feeble 
 colourless ghosts of that divinest tint. 
 
 He is roused from the vague reverie 
 into which the cool silence and the brood- 
 ing beauty around have lulled him, by the 
 sound of approaching voices. He is not 
 to have his well any longer to himself. 
 He looks up with that scarcely latent hos- 
 tility in his eye with which one regards the 
 sudden intruder into a railway carriage, 
 when — counting on keeping it to one's self 
 for a long night journey — one has diffused 
 limbs and parcels over its whole area. 
 The owners of the voices having de- 
 scended, as he had done, the age-worn 
 steps, come into sight. They are both 
 men, and one of them he recognises at 
 once as a Mr. Greenock, a well-known 
 stock figure in Florentine society, a mature 
 bachelor diner-out, a not ill-natured retailer 
 of news, collector of bons-mots, and harm- 
 less appendage of pretty women. Of the 
 other, at whom he scarcely glances, all he
 
 186 ALAS! 
 
 grasps is the fact that he is dressed in 
 clerical attire, and that the first words 
 audible of his speech, as he comes within 
 hearing, is the name of an English- county 
 — Devonshire. The answer comes in a 
 tone of keen interest : 
 
 "Ah, I thought there must be a screw 
 loose !" 
 
 As the new arrivals become aware of the 
 presence of a third person, they pause in 
 their talk ; but presently, Mr. Greenock 
 having recognised Jim and greeted him 
 with a friendly nod and a trivial remark 
 upon the splendour of the day, they resume 
 their interrupted theme, standing together 
 a few yards' distant from him on the walk 
 — resume it in a rather lower but still per- 
 fectly audible key. 
 
 " I thought there must be some reason 
 for their shutting themselves up so reso- 
 lutely," continues Mr. Greenock in the 
 gratified tone of one who has at length 
 solved a long-puzzling riddle. " I thought 
 that there must be a screw loose, in fact ; 
 but are you quite sure of it ?"
 
 AMELI. 187 
 
 The other gives a sigh and a shrug. 
 
 " Unfortunately there can be no doubt 
 on that head ; the whole lamentable occur- 
 rence took place under my own eyes ; the 
 Moat is in my parish." 
 
 u Devonshire !" " A screw loose !" " The 
 Moat !" Burgoyne is still sitting on the 
 well-brim ; but he no longer sees the lapis 
 vault above, nor the placid dark water 
 below. A sort of horrible mist is swim- 
 ming before his eyes ; it is of Elizabeth 
 Le Marchant that they are speaking. 
 Through that mist he snatches a scared 
 look at the speaker ; at him whom but two 
 minutes ago he had glanced at with such a 
 cursorv carelessness. Does he recognise 
 him ? Alas ! yes. Though changed by 
 the acquisition of a bald head and a grizzled 
 beard, he sees him at once to be the man 
 who, at the time of his own acquaintance 
 with the Le Marchant family, had filled 
 the office of vicar of their parish ; under 
 whom he had sat on several drowsy summer 
 Sundav mornings, trembling at the bovs' 
 perilous antics in the great curtained pew.
 
 188 ALAS! 
 
 and laughing inwardly at Elizabeth's mirth- 
 struggling efforts to control them. 
 
 " And you say that they never held up 
 their heads again afterwards?" pursues 
 Mr. Greenock in a tone of good-natured 
 compassion, that is yet largely tinged with 
 gratified curiosity. 
 
 " They left the neighbourhood at once," 
 returns the clergyman. " Dear me, how 
 time flies ! it must be ten years ago now, 
 and I never saw them again until I met 
 the unhappy girl and her mother yester- 
 day, driving in the Via Tornabuoni ; but " 
 lowering his voice a little more — " you 
 will understand that this is strictly entre 
 nous ; that it must not go any further." 
 
 "What do you think I am made of?" 
 cries Mr. Greenock in a burst of generous 
 indignation ; " but " — stepping a pace or 
 two nearer to his interlocutor — " I am not 
 quite sure that I have got the details of the 
 story right ; would you mind just running 
 it over to me again ?" 
 
 Jim has been sitting in such a stunned 
 stillness that it is perhaps no wonder that
 
 AMELIA. 189 
 
 they have forgotten his neighbourhood. 
 At all events, the clergyman is evidently 
 about to comply with his companions re- 
 quest and recapitulate the tale. If Jim 
 preserves his motionless attitude but five 
 minutes longer, he will be put into pos- 
 session of that story whose existence he 
 has already heavily conjectured, and the 
 imagining of which has made him often, 
 within the last week or two, turn with 
 nausea from his food, and toss restlessly 
 upon his bed. Without any trouble on his 
 part, without any possible blame attaching 
 to him, he will learn the poor soul's secret. 
 Never! If the devil wish to tempt him 
 with a prospect of success, it must be with 
 a less unhandsome bait. Almost before 
 the two startled scandalmongers have re- 
 called the fact of his existence by the 
 abrupt noise of his departure, he is half- 
 way back to the terrace, that mist still 
 before his eyes, and a singing in his ears.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "A merry going out bringeth often a mournful 
 return home; and a joyful evening makes many 
 times a sad morning." 
 
 The return drive, as it is quicker, being 
 all downhill, so is it a more silent one 
 than that to the villa had been. Byng, 
 indeed, is as gaily willing to be fondled by 
 Cecilia as he was on his way up ; but there 
 is a mixture of maidenly reserve and sub- 
 tender reproach in her manner which makes 
 their relations somewhat strained. The 
 afternoon's pleasuring has had a jading 
 effect upon Amelia's spirits, as, after having 
 been sucked dry on the subject of Sybilla's 
 maladies, and afterwards at once shaken 
 off, by her female acquaintance, she has not
 
 AMELIA. t 9 i 
 
 been fortunate enough to meet with any- 
 one else to exchange talk with, and has sat 
 in disconsolate yet patient loneliness on a 
 stone bench, afraid to stir from the spot 
 where he had left her, lest she might miss 
 her lover, of whom, however, she has un- 
 accountably seen nothing, until when the 
 Angelus is ringing, and the shadows 
 spreading, he has come to give her curt 
 notice, with half-averted face, that the 
 fiacre is at the door. In point of fact, he 
 has been too conscious of the disorder of 
 his features to dare to expose them sooner 
 than he can help to her fond scrutiny. 
 He would give anything to be able to sit 
 beside, instead of opposite to her during 
 their drive home, as a profile is a much 
 less tell-tale and more governable thing 
 than a full face ; and he is painfully con- 
 scious that as often as she imagines she 
 can do it without being detected by him, 
 she is stealing looks of inquiring anxiety 
 at him. He tries to put her off the scent 
 by spasmodic comments upon the enter- 
 tainment that they have just quitted ; and
 
 i 9 2 ALAS! 
 
 she does her best to keep up the ball of 
 conversation, since she sees that it is his 
 wish. But in vain. Each forced remark 
 falls still-born, leading to nothing. It is 
 Cecilia who at last succeeds in giving a 
 fillip to the languid talk. 
 
 " I did not know that Mrs. Roche was 
 a cousin of your beauty, Miss Le Mar- 
 chant," she says suddenly, growing tired of 
 her pensive attitude, and addressing herself 
 to Jim. 
 
 He starts guiltily. " Did not you ?" 
 
 He must look odd ; for even Cecilia's 
 large and preoccupied cow eyes rest upon 
 him with an expression of surprise. 
 
 " I wonder why she was not there 
 to-day." 
 
 It is not exactly a question, yet her 
 great shallow orbs do not seem to be 
 going to leave his face until he makes 
 some response. He forces himself to 
 do so. 
 
 " I understood Miss Le Marchant to 
 say that they are not going out just 
 now."
 
 AMELIA. 193 
 
 lk And why are not they, pray ?" inquires 
 Cecilia, in an injured voice, as if the retire- 
 ment from the world of the two ladies in 
 question were a personal injury to herself; 
 " they are not in mourning, all their gowns 
 are coloured ones, and they do not look as 
 if they had bad health — perhaps, however " 
 (after a moment's thoughtful attempt to 
 find a solution) — "perhaps, however, they 
 may have something— one never knows — 
 people have such unexpected diseases now- 
 adays — hysteria, perhaps, or fits." 
 
 At this ingenious suggestion Jim is con- 
 scious of a writhing motion passing over 
 the stalwart form of Byng beside him. In 
 his own brain, if there is room for anything 
 but the desire to evade Amelia's eyes, is a 
 dim sense of relief at a suggestion so gro- 
 tesquely wide of the mark as that made 
 by the younger Miss Wilson. In perfect 
 innocence of the effect produced upon her 
 companions by her bright hypothesis, 
 Cecilia goes on to remind her sister of 
 the parallel case of a very handsome girl 
 whom they had once reckoned among their 
 
 vol. 1. .13
 
 194 ALAS! 
 
 acquaintance, and who was periodically 
 being found by her family with her head 
 under the fender. But Amelia rises but 
 faintly to the reminiscence, and the re- 
 mainder of the drive is accomplished in a 
 general silence. 
 
 The next day is the one which had been 
 fixed upon for the expedition to Certosa. 
 It was only with a very large admixture of 
 wormwood in his prospective pleasure that 
 Jim had ever looked forward to this party, 
 but now he anticipates it with absolute 
 dread. How can he face Elizabeth and 
 her mother, with that ominous phrase of 
 the "screw loose" still ringing in his ears? 
 He feels a traitor towards them, in that 
 he has, however unwillingly, overheard it. 
 To add to his mental uneasiness is the fact 
 of his having as yet not broken to Amelia 
 his intentions with regard to the disposal 
 of his afternoon. Amelia's eyes have for 
 years had the habit of covertly watching 
 him to read his wishes almost before they 
 rose ; but in their gaze yesterday he had, 
 unless misled by his guilty conscience,
 
 AMELIA. 195 
 
 detected a new quality, a quality of alarm 
 and enlightenment. He will get over the 
 communication of his piece of news as 
 early in the day as may be ; so, having 
 finished breakfast before Byng has put in 
 his, as usual, tardy appearance, he takes 
 his hasty way to the Anglo-Americain. 
 He finds the family there in a more placid 
 frame of mind than that which they had 
 presented on one or two of his recent 
 visits. Sybilla is expecting her doctor, 
 on which occasions she always likes to 
 have a more lacy coverlet than usual 
 thrown over her languid feet ; a greater 
 efflorescence of pink ribbons about her 
 thin throat, and a disposition of pots of 
 lilies about her wan head. Amelia, active 
 and long-suffering as usual, is moving 
 about in patient execution of her vain and 
 tiresome whimsies. Cecilia sits tranquilly 
 in the window, knitting an elaborate pair 
 of men's woollen gloves, not indeed — to do 
 her justice — for anyone in particular, but 
 with a wise forethought for the accidents 
 and possibilities of life. Since, on this 
 
 1 3 — 2
 
 196 ALAS/ 
 
 occasion, his sweetheart shows no inclina- 
 tion to draw him away into the dining- 
 room for a tete-a-tete, Jim has to take the 
 bull by the horns, and rush into his subject 
 in a more public manner than he had 
 intended. But the one desire to get 
 it over outbalances all minor considera- 
 tions. 
 
 " Amelia," he begins suddenly, and even 
 to himself his voice sounds discourteous 
 and abrupt, "shall you want me this after- 
 noon r 
 
 The moment that the words are out of 
 his mouth it strikes him that the form into 
 which he has thrown his question is more 
 than necessarily untender. She stops in 
 the patting of Sybilla's smart pillows, and 
 perhaps there is something a little abrupt 
 too in her monosyllabic " Why ?" 
 
 " Because," standing before the fireplace, 
 with his back to the three women, and 
 throwing the words over his shoulder, 
 "because if you do not, Byng and I were 
 thinking of going to Certosa." 
 
 There is a pause. He hears that Cecilia's
 
 AMELIA. 197 
 
 needles have stopped clicking ; her work 
 has dropped into her lap. In another 
 moment she will have proposed to come 
 too. " With the Le Marchants," he goes 
 on, shooting out the fateful words like 
 bullets ; " & par tic carrie" 
 
 Still silence behind him. He cannot go 
 on staring for ever at the billets of wood 
 of the unlit fire. He has to turn round 
 and face his companions. The only one 
 of them whose pleasure or displeasure in 
 his announcement he at all heeds — Amelia 
 — is stooping over Sybilla, re-arranging in 
 a high, picturesque tier behind the invalid's 
 long back, three cushions, and her face is 
 almost entirely hidden from him by her 
 attitude. 
 
 " Of course if it is in the least incon- 
 venient, if you have made any other plans 
 for me — if, in fact, you want me," he con- 
 tinues in a tone that is at once apologetic 
 and dogged. 
 
 " But I do not," cries she, answering at 
 last, and with a distinct laugh in her voice, 
 a laugh into whose quality he is not anxious
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 too curiously to inquire. "You must not 
 be so conceited as to think that I always 
 want you ! In point of fact, you could not 
 have hit upon a day that suited me better. 
 I am really rather ' throng ' to-day, as they 
 say in Yorkshire. I have quite a hundred 
 things to do, and father wants me to help 
 him to correct the proofs of his sermon, 
 the sermon he preached at Mr. Moffat's 
 church on the Holy Innocents' Day. He 
 has been asked to publish it — is not that 
 flattering? Poor father, I believe he will 
 end by being a popular preacher — in fact " 
 (laughing again), ' k the whole family is 
 going up in the world !" 
 
 There is such a forced mirth in her tone 
 that Jim feels much more guiltily uncom- 
 fortable than if she had treated him to 
 hysterics or sulks. Nor does his satis- 
 faction with himself increase, when, upon 
 his rising to depart, she runs out of the 
 room after him, to say to him, while her 
 homely face twitches against her will, how 
 much she hopes that he will enjoy himself; 
 how perfectly happy she shall be without
 
 AMELIA. 199 
 
 him ; and how eagerly she shall look 
 forward to hearing all about it from him 
 to-morrow. "It will be almost better than 
 going to Certosa herself," she ends. 
 
 But against the unnatural altitude of this 
 last flight of abnegation nature revolts, 
 and, becoming conscious of a break in her 
 voice, she hastily . retreats and gets back 
 into the salon, in time to see Cecilia 
 shaking her elaborate head, and to hear 
 her remarking with slow emphasis, " Mark 
 my words ! There is something odd about 
 those people, and it is not hysteria !" 
 
 With spirits sensibly worsened by his 
 interview, Burgoyne returns to the Minerva, 
 and, mounting to Byng's bedroom, finds 
 that young gentleman stretched upon his 
 bed, gloom in his usually jocund eye, and 
 an open letter lying on the floor beside 
 him. But Jim is far too preoccupied to 
 notice anybody's gloom but his own. 
 
 " I came to ask at what hour we are to 
 set off this afternoon ?" he says with a sort 
 of flat moroseness in his tone. 
 
 " We indeed!" rejoins the other with a
 
 2oo ALAS! 
 
 groan, and rolling over with a sort of petu- 
 lance on the bed, dishevelling the neatly- 
 smoothed pillow by burrowing his ruffled 
 head in it — " we !" 
 
 There is such a heart-rent woe in the 
 accent with which the last monosyllable is 
 pronounced that for a moment Burgoyne 
 has no other idea but that his young friend, 
 too, has become aware of the " screw loose," 
 has heard, perhaps in detail, that story 
 from before whose ominous opening he 
 himself had fled. The thought sends his 
 heart into his throat, so as to render him 
 incapable of asking an explanation of the 
 other's affliction. 
 
 " We !" repeats Byng for the third time, 
 and very indistinctly, as he is now lying 
 entirely on his face. 
 
 " Why do you go on saying ' we ' in that 
 idiotic way?" asks Jim at last, recovering 
 his voice — recovering it only to employ it 
 in imitating the younger man's accents, in 
 a manner which displays more exasperation 
 than natural talent for mimicry. It is not 
 a politely-worded inquiry, but it has the
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 desired result of acting as a tonic on him 
 at whom it is aimed, making him not only 
 roll over once again, but actually sit up. 
 
 " Why do I say we ?" repeats he, his 
 young eyes looking lamentably out from 
 under the fall of his tumbled hair — 
 " because it is not we ! it is you ! You 
 lucky dog, you will have her all to your- 
 self!' 
 
 Jim heaves an inaudible sigh of relief. 
 Whatever may be the cause of his com- 
 panion's enigmatical conduct, it is evidently 
 not what he had feared. There is, how- 
 ever, no evidence of relief or any other 
 mild quality in his next remark. 
 
 "If you would talk less like an ass, I 
 should have a better chance of knowing 
 what you are driving at !" 
 
 The query seems only to renew and 
 deepen the other's tribulation. He falls 
 back into his former attitude. 
 
 "You will hold the white wonder of 
 dear Juliet's hand!" he groans. "No, do 
 not go " (with a sudden and startling 
 change of tone, springing off the bed, as
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 he becomes aware that his friend is making 
 for the door, unable to bear those rhap- 
 sodies, whose full distastefulness to their 
 hearer the utterer little conjectures). ''I'll 
 tell you! I'll explain! Why are you in 
 such a deuce of a hurry ? I cannot go to 
 Certosa because I have just heard from 
 my mother that she is to arrive to-day. 
 She will be here in another hour." 
 
 Jim's fingers are already on the door- 
 handle, but this piece of news arrests him. 
 
 "Your mother? I did not know that 
 she was coming abroad." 
 
 " No more did I !" 
 
 "It must have been a very sudden 
 thought !" 
 
 "Very!" 
 
 " What a delightful surprise for you !" 
 
 " Delightful !" There is so ludicrous a 
 discrepancy between the adjective and the 
 accent with which it is rendered that Jim 
 bursts into a bitter laugh. 
 
 " She would be flattered if she could see 
 your elation at the prospect of meeting 
 her!"
 
 AMELIA. 203 
 
 Byng's blood rushes up under his clear 
 smooth skin at his friend's jeer, but he 
 answers, with some dignity : 
 
 " I do not think you have any right to 
 imply that I am not always glad to see my 
 mother ; I do not deny that, if it had been 
 equally convenient to her, I had rather 
 she should have come twenty-four hours 
 later." 
 
 Jim feels ashamed of himself, though, 
 being an Anglo-Saxon, he has far too 
 much false shame to confess it directly, 
 and what he means for an amende, when it 
 comes, is of an oblique nature. 
 
 " I think far the best plan will be to 
 put off the excursion altogether ; I am 
 sure that I am not particularly keen 
 about it." 
 
 The indignant red has rapidly died out 
 of Byng's face ; his placability being only 
 to be surpassed by his slowness to take 
 offence. 
 
 "Is it possible?" he asks in a tone of 
 stupefaction ; then, with a sudden tardy 
 recollection of the rosy fetters in which his
 
 204 ALAS! 
 
 friend is held by another lady, he adds — 
 14 But, of course, you are not — I was for- 
 getting !" 
 
 Jim winces. 
 
 " As it is your party, you had better 
 send up a note at once to the Piazza 
 d' Azeglio." 
 
 " No, do not let us both throw them 
 over !" cries Byng eagerly. " Heaven 
 knows it was hard enough to persuade 
 them to accept in the first instance. If 
 you go we shall at all events keep our com- 
 munications open ; and you — you will say 
 something to her for me ?" 
 
 "What kind of something?" inquires 
 the older man carpingly. "Am I to tell 
 her only what a fine fellow you are 
 in general, or anything more circum- 
 stantial ?" 
 
 " Tell her " begins Byng in a rapt 
 
 voice ; but apparently the sight of his 
 companion, who has somewhat ostenta- 
 tiously pulled out a note-book and pencil, 
 and assumed the patient air of one about 
 to write to dictation, dries the stream
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 205 
 
 of his young eloquence ; " tell her — 
 nothing." 
 
 " ' Nothing speaks our grief like to speak nothing !' " 
 
 replies Jim, leaving the room with this 
 quotation on his lips, rather hastily, for 
 fear lest the other should change his 
 mind.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 It is five o'clock, the hour fixed for the 
 expedition to Certosa, and in the e7ttresol 
 of 12 bis, Piazza d' Azeglio, Mrs. and Miss 
 Le Marchant are sitting — hatted, gloved, 
 and en-toiit-cas-ed — in expectation of the 
 arrival of their double escort. Elizabeth's 
 afternoon has, so far, not been a lazy one, 
 as her little cousin Bertie and his dog have 
 again been good enough to pay her a 
 lengthy visit, and the former has insisted 
 upon a repetition of the musical perform- 
 ance of the other day, though with trun- 
 cated rites. Without the powerful aid of 
 Byng, Elizabeth has found it a task con- 
 siderably beyond her strength to hold a 
 large collie, poised on his hind-legs, on a
 
 AMELIA. 207 
 
 music-stool. He has jumped down re- 
 peatedly, and now lies on his back — an 
 attitude in which experience has taught 
 him he is less attackable than in any other 
 — sawing the air with his fore-paws, and 
 lifting his lip in a deprecating grin. 
 
 "Where is Mr. Byng ?" cries Bertie 
 fretfully, baulked in his efforts to make his 
 wily victim resume the perpendicular. " I 
 want Mr. Byng ! Why does not Mr. Byng 
 come r 
 
 " Perhaps if you went to the window," 
 suggests Mrs. Le Marchant, in that 
 patiently coaxing voice in which we are 
 wont to address a tiresome child on a visit, 
 instead of the buffet which we should 
 bestow upon it were it resident — "perhaps 
 if you went to the window and looked out, 
 you would see him coming round the 
 corner of the Piazza." 
 
 The suggestion is at once accepted, and 
 the child, balancing his fidgety body on a 
 chair, and craning his neck over the 
 window-ledge, is shouting shrill pieces of 
 information as to the passers-by to his
 
 2o8 ALAS/ 
 
 friends within the room. Presently he 
 shrieks out in triumph : 
 
 " I see him ! He is just coming into 
 sight! He is walking so fast! No!" — a 
 moment later, with a changed and disgusted 
 note, as a nearer view corrects the first 
 impression — " it is not he at all ! It is only 
 the other one !" 
 
 " Only the other one T It is quite im- 
 possible that the sound of the child's voice 
 can reach down to the open portal of No. 
 12 bis, at which Jim has now arrived, and 
 it is also certain that neither of the ladies 
 whom he has come to visit are likely to 
 word their surprise at his having arrived 
 alone with the frank brutality which is 
 confined to the utterances of infancy ; and 
 yet Jim, as he presents himself, an- 
 nounced by Annunziata, the hard-featured 
 possessor of a lovely name, is quite as con- 
 scious, as if he had overheard the boy's 
 slighting remark, of being " only the other 
 one !" 
 
 Before he can begin his apologies, the 
 eager little boy has run up to him.
 
 AMELIA, 209 
 
 " Where is Mr. Byng? I want Mr. 
 Byng ! Why has not he come ? Elizabeth 
 wants Mr. Byng !" 
 
 At this last clause Burgoyne is conscious 
 of a dark, hot flush rising to his face, and, 
 partly to hide it, partly to avoid seeing 
 what the effect of his communication may 
 be upon her for whom it is meant, he 
 stoops over the child, addressing his answer 
 to him : 
 
 " Mr. Byng is very sorry, very sorry 
 indeed, but he cannot come." 
 
 " Cannot come ! Why cannot he 
 come ?" 
 
 " Because he has gone to meet his 
 mammy," replies Jim, trying to speak in a 
 light and playful voice ; "she is to arrive 
 unexpectedly in Florence to-day ; no good 
 boy would leave his mammy when she had 
 come all the way from England to see him, 
 would he ?" 
 
 But to this fustian and copy-book gener- 
 ality the young gentleman addressed is too 
 angry to reply. 
 
 " It is a great disappointment to Byng ; 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2io ALAS! 
 
 he bid me tell you what a great disappoint- 
 ment it is to him !" says Jim, turning to 
 the two ladies, and looking apologetically 
 from one to the other. 
 
 Elizabeth's head is averted ; but on her 
 mother's features he sees, or fancies he 
 sees, slight evidences of a feeling not unlike 
 relief. 
 
 " It is not of the least consequence," she 
 says cheerfully ; "we can go any other day 
 just as well." 
 
 Burgoyne's heart sinks. In these last 
 sentences he too surely traces signs of the 
 evasion and would -be -retrograde nature 
 which has all along characterized Mrs. Le 
 Marchant's relations with him. It has 
 seemed to him that he has been looking 
 forward to the expedition with sensations 
 of almost unmixed dread, and yet, now 
 that he seems to be going to be delivered 
 from it, what he experiences certainly does 
 not come under the head of elation. 
 
 " You wish to give up the excursion ?" 
 he asks, in a tone which he honestly tries to 
 make as neutral and colourless as he can.
 
 AMELIA. 2n 
 
 " Well, I thought so — we thought so, did 
 not we, Elizabeth ?" 
 
 The person thus addressed lifts her 
 head, and all over her features he, eagerly 
 scanning them, sees written a warm acqui- 
 escence in her motherly decision, an 
 acquiescence which, as her eyes meet his 
 — his, in which his disappointment is 
 written a good deal more plainly than he 
 is aware — changes slowly and sweetly into 
 indecision. 
 
 "I do not know," she answers, her 
 gentle look clouded a little, and yet kindly 
 interrogating his ; " if Mr. Burgoyne is 
 willing to burden himself with us ; and 
 Bertie must play at being a grown-up 
 gentleman, and help to take care of us ! 
 Bertie, will you play at being a grown-up 
 gentleman ?" 
 
 To this proposition Bertie assents 
 warmly, and begins thrasonically to re- 
 count to inattentive ears the high and 
 singular deeds with which he will cele- 
 brate his arrival at maturity. But, as Mrs. 
 Le Marchant puts a strenuous veto upon 
 
 14 — 2
 
 2i2 ALAS! 
 
 his adoption as escort, and as his nurse 
 appears at the same juncture to fetch him, 
 he and his dog are presently removed ; and 
 the other three set off without him. 
 
 Burgoyne has chartered a fiacre, with a 
 horse as little lame as is ever to be found 
 in Florence, and in this vehicle they are 
 presently rolling along. None of them 
 are in very exuberant spirits. Burgoyne 
 is as well aware as if her sensitive lips had 
 put the fact into words, that for Elizabeth 
 the pleasure of the outing has evaporated 
 with the absence of Byng, and that it is 
 only the soft-hearted shrinking of a sweet 
 nature from inflicting mortification on a 
 fellow-creature that has set her opposite to 
 him in her white gown. He has never 
 seen her dressed in white before, and says 
 to himself that it was for Byng's sake that 
 she has made herself so summer-fine. 
 But even if it be so, it is not Byng who is 
 profiting by it. It is for him, not Byng, 
 that the large Italian light is glorifying its 
 thin fabric. Lily -pure, snow -clean she 
 looks, sitting under her sunshade ; and he
 
 AMELIA. ■ 213 
 
 sits over against her in a stupid silence. 
 It seems to him as if his only safety were 
 in silence, as if, did he speak at all, he 
 must put into brutal words the brutal 
 questions that are dinging in his head, that 
 seem knocking for utterance against the 
 gate of his set teeth. 
 
 " What is the ' screw loose ' ? How is 
 she an ' unfortunate girl ' ? Why have 
 they ' never held up their heads since ' ? 
 Since what ?" He looks, in a fierce per- 
 plexity, from one to the other of those 
 delicately poised heads, held aloft with 
 such modest dignity. Surely it is beyond 
 the bounds of possibility that any heavily 
 hideous shame or leaden disgrace can ever 
 have weighed upon them ! Probably the 
 intensity of his thought has given an 
 intensity to his look, of which he is un- 
 aware ; for he presently finds the soft 
 veiled voice of Elizabeth — Elizabeth who 
 has hitherto been as mute as himself — ad- 
 dressing him : 
 
 " How very grave you look ! 1 wonder 
 what you are thinking of?"
 
 2i4 ALAS! 
 
 The question, striking in so strangely 
 pat, brings him back with a start. For a 
 second an almost overpowering temptation 
 assails him to tell her what is the object of 
 his thought, to answer her with that whole 
 and naked truth which we can so seldom 
 employ in our intercourse with our fellow- 
 men. But one glance at her innocent face, 
 which has a vague trouble in it, chases the 
 lunatic impulse, though he dallies with the 
 temptation to the extent of saying : 
 
 ''Would you really like to know? Do 
 you really wish me to tell you ?" 
 
 He looks at her penetratingly as he puts 
 the question. Before either his eyes or 
 his manner she shrinks. 
 
 " Oh, no — no !" she cries with tremulous 
 haste, " of course not ! I was only joking. 
 What business have I with your thoughts ? 
 I never wish to know people's thoughts ; 
 if their looks and words are kind, that is 
 all that concerns me !" 
 
 He relapses into silence ; but her words, 
 and still more the agitated manner in which 
 they are pronounced, make a vague yet
 
 AMELIA. 215 
 
 definite addition to the disquiet of his 
 soul. 
 
 By setting off at so judiciously late an 
 hour as five o'clock, they have avoided the 
 greater part of the flood of tourists which 
 daily sets towards Certosa, and which they 
 meet, tightly packed in crowded vehicles, 
 sweeping Florence-wards in a choking 
 cloud of white dust ; so that on reaching 
 the Certosa Monastery, sitting so grandly 
 on its hill-top, they have the satisfaction of 
 finding that it is temporarily all their own 
 — all their own but for the few white- 
 frocked figures and tonsured heads which 
 an economico-democratic Government has 
 left to hint what in its palmy days was the 
 state of that which is now only a Govern- 
 ment museum. 
 
 A burly monk receives them. He does 
 not look at all a prey to the pensive sorrow 
 one would expect at the desecration of his 
 holy things and the dispersion of his 
 fraternity. Probably, in his slow peasant 
 mind there is room for nothing but self- 
 congratulation at his being one of the few
 
 216 ALAS! 
 
 — only fifteen in all — left to end their days 
 in the old home. He leads them stolidly 
 through chapels and refectory — the now 
 too roomy refectory, where the poor rem- 
 nant of Carthusians dine together only 
 on Sundays — through meagrely furnished 
 cells, in one of which he matter-of-factly 
 lets down the front flap of a cupboard to 
 show what forms his daily dining-table 
 except on the happy Sunday, to which he 
 must look forward so warmly. 
 
 " Must not he love Sunday !" cries 
 Elizabeth, with sparkling eyes. " Do not 
 you long to know what they have for 
 dinner on Sundays ? Do you think he 
 would mind telling us ?" 
 
 Elizabeth's spirits are going up like 
 quicksilver. It is evident, despite the 
 delicate melancholy of her face, that she 
 is naturally of an extremely joyous and 
 enjoying nature, and gifted with a fresh- 
 ness of sensation which belongs ordinarily 
 rather to the green age, at which Jim first 
 remembers her, than to the mature one 
 which he knows for a certaintv that she
 
 has now reached. Sh 
 a lively and surprised d 
 little details of arr a g 
 life that he is at last impc 
 something ^ly: 
 
 M But you mu- 
 monasteries befor 
 
 •• Xot one." 
 
 " But there are, er 
 them all over It 
 
 •' I dare s . 
 
 • X:: real! 
 She lifts up 1 
 
 him with an air 
 stioo, g 
 
 M I been 
 
 here or 
 
 or mat I hc-. 
 don^ 
 Ht 
 
 is t igs is :s'.y ; 
 
 s
 
 218 ALAS! 
 
 and phenomena, which would have come 
 as a matter of course within the range of 
 observation of every woman of her age 
 and station. Against his will, a horrid 
 recollection flashes upon him of a novel he 
 had once read, in which the hero exhibits 
 a singular ignorance of any events or inci- 
 dents that had occurred within the ten 
 years preceding the opening of the story — 
 an ignorance which towards the end of the 
 third volume was accounted for by its 
 transpiring that he has spent the inter- 
 vening period in a convict prison ! He 
 drives the grotesque and monstrous idea 
 with scourges out of his mind ; but it 
 recurs, and recurs to be displaced by 
 another hardly less painful, if in some 
 degree more probable. Can it be possible 
 that the crushing blow which has fallen 
 upon the Le Marchant family, and upon 
 Elizabeth in particular, whitening the 
 mother's hair, and giving that tear- washed 
 look to the daughter's sweet eyes — can it 
 be possible that that heavy stroke was in- 
 sanity ? Can Elizabeth have been out of
 
 AMELIA. 219 
 
 her mind ? Can she have spent in con- 
 finement any of that past, from all allusion 
 to which she shies away with a sensitive- 
 ness more shrinking than that of 
 
 " The tender horns of cockled snails." 
 
 He is so much absorbed in his torment- 
 ing speculations about her that for the 
 moment he forgets her bodily presence ; 
 and it is only her voice, her soft sane voice, 
 that brings him back to a consciousness of 
 it. They have been led into a salon, in 
 which, as their guide tells them, the con- 
 fraternity used to receive any " personage " 
 that came to visit them. Alas, no per- 
 sonage ever visits the poor frocked remnant 
 now ! It is a charming lightsome room, 
 that gives one no monastic idea, with 
 pretty airy fancies of flower-wreaths and 
 arabesques, and dainty dancing figures 
 painted on wall and ceiling and doors. 
 One of these latter is half open, and 
 through it comes an exquisite sudden view 
 of the hills, with their sharp-cut shadows 
 and their sunlit slopes ; of shining Florence
 
 ALAS! 
 
 at their feet, of the laugh of young verdure, 
 and the wedded gloom and glory of cypress 
 and poplar filling the foreground. Upon 
 Elizabeth's small face, turned suddenly 
 towards him, seems reflected some of the 
 ineffable radiance of the Tuscan light. 
 
 " When next I dream of heaven," she 
 says, in her tender, vibrating voice, " it 
 will be like this. Do you ever dream of 
 heaven ? I often do, and I always wake 
 crying because it is not true ; but " — with 
 a joyful change of key — " I will not cry 
 any more without better cause. Since I 
 came here I have found earth beautiful 
 and delightful enough for me !" 
 
 He looks back at her, hardly hearing 
 her words, but chiding himself fiercely for 
 the disloyal thought which he has enter- 
 tained, however unwillingly ; the thought 
 that the foul fiend of madness could ever, 
 even temporarily, have defiled the temple 
 of those eyes whence reason and feeling, 
 so sweetly wedded, are shining out upon 
 him, unworthy as he is of their rays. 
 
 " Since you came here ?" he repeats in a
 
 AMELIA 
 
 sort of dreamy interrogation; "only since 
 you came here ?" 
 
 11 You must not take me up so sharply !" 
 she cries in a voice of playful remonstrance, 
 in which there is a lilt of young gaiety. 
 " I warn you that I will not be taken up so 
 sharply! I did not say, 'tw/v since I came 
 here !' I said, ' Since I came here !' "
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Presently they pass into the still, cloistered 
 garden, in whose unmown grass - squares 
 gray-blue flowers are blowing, beside whose 
 walks pale pink peonies are flushing, and 
 round whose well the grave rosemary 
 bushes are set. Through the whole place 
 is an atmosphere of deep peace, of silence, 
 leisure, dignity. It is virtually a tete-a-tete, 
 as their tonsured guide, seeing their evident 
 harmlessness, has left them to their own 
 devices ; and Mrs. Le Marchant has sat 
 down to rest upon a camp-stool which 
 Elizabeth has been carrying ever since 
 they left the carriage. It has fidgeted Jim 
 to see her burdened with it ; for let a man 
 be ever so little in love with a woman, his
 
 AMELIA. 223 
 
 tendency always is to think her as brittle 
 as spun glass, to believe that any weight, 
 however light, will bruise her arm — any 
 pebble, however tiny, wound her tender 
 foot. He has offered to relieve her of it, 
 but she has refused — playfully at first — 
 telling him she is sure that he will lose 
 it ; and afterwards, when he insists, more 
 gravely, though with gentle gratitude, 
 saying that it would never do for her to 
 get into the habit of being waited upon, 
 and that she always carries mammy's 
 things. It is perhaps absurd that a 
 woman of six-and-twenty should speak of 
 her mother as "mammy," yet the homely 
 and childish abbreviation seems to him 
 to come " most fair and featously " from 
 her lips. 
 
 They stay a long time in the sun-kissed 
 garden, considering that there is after all 
 not very much to see there. But Eliza- 
 beth's light steps, that to-day seem set to 
 some innocent dancing-tune, are loath to 
 leave it ; she must smell the great new 
 peonies, monthly-rose-coloured, faintly per-
 
 224 ALAS/ 
 
 fumed ; she must steal a sprig of rosemary 
 "to put into her coffin when she dies," at 
 which he catches his breath, shuddering ; 
 she must peep into the well. He insists 
 on her holding his hand for safety as she 
 leans over to do so ; her little fingers grip 
 his tight as she cranes her neck and bends 
 her lissom body. But what a small hand- 
 ful they are, compared to those other fingers 
 — those kind, useful, but undoubtedly solid 
 fingers — which he has held perfunctorily 
 through many a matter-of-fact hour. By- 
 and-by they stray away together out of the 
 bounteous air of the hill-top into a semi- 
 underground church, to see the fifteenth 
 and sixteenth century monuments, which 
 look as fresh as if their marble had left 
 its home in Carrara but yesterday. They 
 stand looking down at those three kin who 
 lie side by side before the high altar, each 
 with head dropped a little sideways on the 
 shoulder, as if overcome by sudden sleep. 
 They step on into the side chapel, where 
 that yet nobler mitred figure, fashioned by 
 Donatello's hand, stretches his prone length
 
 AMELIA. 225 
 
 above his border of fruit and flowers, among 
 which lies a carved skull, through whose 
 empty eye-holes — strange and grisly fancy 
 contrasting with so much beauty — a mock- 
 ing ribbon runs. Elizabeth is perfectly 
 silent the whole time, but no flood of talk 
 could make Jim half so conscious of her 
 presence, palpitating with sympathy and 
 feeling, could give half the confidence he 
 enjoys that she will introduce no allusion 
 to either Kensal Green or Woking, as it is 
 but too probable that the excellent com- 
 panion of most of his Florentine rambles 
 would have done. 
 
 Elizabeth has been perfectly silent, yet 
 at last she speaks. It is in the Chapter 
 House, where, as most of us have done, 
 they have suddenly come upon another 
 tomb, the tomb of one lying full-length on 
 the pavement before the altar, with no 
 separating edge of marble or wrought-iron 
 railing to keep him from the foot of the 
 passer-by. He lies there, portrayed with 
 such an extraordinary vividness of life 
 about his prostrate figure and his severe, 
 
 vol. 1. 15
 
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 : 
 
 " .:~ ;-. ztl~~± ::::::::.:.: unvustmen: ;.: 
 
 : : _ 
 
 
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 Liung 
 
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 r- 
 
 
 : 
 
 
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 228 ALAS! 
 
 another above her head, half dropped on 
 Elizabeth's slight shoulder. 
 
 " Does she often faint ? Is she apt to 
 do it ?" asks Jim, in a whisper. 
 
 " Never — never !" replies the girl in a 
 heart-rent voice, raining kisses on her 
 mother's white face. "Oh, darling, dar- 
 ling, what has happened to you ?" 
 
 Perhaps it is through the vivifying rain 
 of those warm kisses, but a little colour is 
 certainly beginning to steal back into the 
 elder woman's cheek, and she draws a long 
 breath. 
 
 " Oh, if she could have a glass of 
 water !" cries Elizabeth, greedily verifying 
 these slight signs of returning conscious- 
 ness. "Get her a glass of water! Oh, 
 please get her a glass of water — quick ! 
 quick!" 
 
 Burgoyne complies, though it is not 
 without reluctant misgivings that he with- 
 draws the efficacious support of his own 
 solid arm, and leaves Elizabeth's poor little 
 limb to bear the whole weight of her 
 mother's inert body.
 
 AMELIA. 229 
 
 Their guide has, as before mentioned, 
 disappeared ; and Jim has not the slightest 
 idea in which direction to seek him. It is 
 five good minutes before he discovers him, 
 standing near the door of the monastery, 
 in conversation with a visitor who is ap- 
 parently just in the act of departure. The 
 stranger is in clerical dress ; and, as he 
 turns to nod farewell to the monk, Jim 
 recognises in his features those of the 
 Devonshire clergyman, whom he had last 
 seen, and so unwillingly heard, by the 
 well-brim of the Bellosguardo villa. In 
 a second a light has flashed into his mind. 
 Mrs. Le Marchant, too, has seen that 
 stranger — has seen him for the first time 
 for ten years, since it is evident that the 
 recognition of mother and daughter in the 
 Via Tornabuoni, to which the Moat's late 
 rector had referred, could not have been 
 reciprocal. It is to the fact of her having 
 been brought suddenly and unpreparedly 
 face to face with that mysterious past, 
 which seems to be always blocking his 
 own path to her friendship, that is to be
 
 230 ALAS! 
 
 attributed the poor woman's collapse. A 
 rush of puzzled compassion flows over him 
 as he realizes the fact, and his one im- 
 patient wish is to return with all the speed 
 he may to the forlorn couple he has left, to 
 reassure them as to the removal (even 
 though it may only be a temporary one) 
 out of their path of the object of their 
 unexplained terror. Will the mother have 
 imparted to her child the cause of her faint- 
 ing, or will she have tried to keep it from 
 her? 
 
 The first glimpse he gets when, having 
 at length procured the desired glass of 
 water, he comes into sight of them, 
 answers the question for him. Mrs. Le 
 Marchant is evidently partially recovered. 
 She is sitting up, no longer supported by 
 her daughter's arm, and that daughter is 
 lying on her knees, with her head buried 
 in her mother's lap. As he nears them, 
 he sees the elder woman hurriedly pressing 
 her daughter's arm to warn her of his 
 approach, and Elizabeth obediently lifts 
 her face. But such a face ! He can
 
 AMELIA. 231 
 
 scarcely believe it is the same that laid 
 itself — hardly less bloomily fair than they 
 — against the faint peony buds half an 
 hour ago ; a face out of which the 
 innocent glad shining has been blown by 
 some gust of brutal wind — scared, blanched, 
 miserable. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am better, much better — 
 quite well, in fact," says Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant, pushing away the offered glass, 
 and speaking with a ghastly shadow of 
 her former even cheerfulness. " Give it 
 to Elizabeth, she needs it more than I do ! 
 You see, I gave her a terrible fright !" 
 
 He silently holds out the water to 
 Elizabeth, and she, without attempting to 
 take the tumbler into her own trembling 
 hand, drinks. He looks with impotent 
 pity from the bent blonde head to the 
 prematurely snow-white one. How can 
 he word his reassurance to them without 
 appearing to thrust himself with officious 
 insolence into their confidence ? It seems 
 to himself that he solves the problem very 
 clumsily.
 
 232 ALAS! 
 
 " I am afraid you must have thought me 
 but slow," he says, feeling that he is drag- 
 ging in the piece of information he is 
 anxious to give them with an awkward 
 head-and-shoulder-ness ; " but at first I 
 couldn't find our monk, and when I did, 
 he was engaged — he was talking to a 
 visitor — a clergyman." 
 
 He pauses, conscious that at the last 
 word a tremulous shiver has passed over 
 the kneeling figure. 
 
 " Yes, a clergyman," he goes on with 
 nervous haste, hurrying to put them out 
 of their pain ; "an elderly, gray-haired, 
 English clergyman, who was just in the 
 act of going away ; indeed, before I left, 
 he had gone. I saw him drive off!" 
 
 Ere he has finished his sentence, he is 
 seized by the apprehension that there must 
 appear to his listeners something suspicious 
 in the laboured details into which he is 
 entering ; presupposing, as they do, that 
 he is aware of there being for them an 
 interest attaching to the fact of the 
 strangers departure. And indeed, as he
 
 AMELIA. 233 
 
 speaks, he is conscious that Mrs. Le 
 Marchant's frightened eyes, which have 
 been taking surreptitious trips round the 
 peaceful garden, now come home with a no 
 less alarmed look to his face. 
 
 " Was he — was he — an acquaintance of 
 yours ?! she asks, with an attempt at a 
 laugh — " this clergyman, I think you said 
 he was — that you noticed him so particu- 
 larly ?" 
 
 "An acquaintance?" repeats Jim doubt- 
 fully ; " what is an acquaintance ? a man 
 whom one knew a very little, and disliked 
 a good deal, ten years ago ; and who 
 passes one by without a gleam of recogni- 
 tion now — is that an acquaintance ?" 
 
 Elizabeth's hat has fallen on the ground, 
 and hitherto she has seemed unconscious 
 of the evening sunbeams smiting her un- 
 covered head ; now she stoops and picks 
 it up. 
 
 11 And you did not make yourself known 
 to him then ?" continues Mrs. Le Marchant, 
 still with that painful effort at lightness of 
 tone. " You let him drive off without
 
 234 ALAS! 
 
 telling him who you were ? or asking him 
 where he was staying ? or how long his 
 visit to Florence is to last ? or — or any- 
 thing ?" 
 
 Jim's eyes are fixed on her as she 
 speaks with a compassionate steadiness, 
 under which hers quail waveringly. Is it 
 possible that she can imagine that she is 
 deceiving him by this miserable pretence 
 of indifference ? 
 
 " I have no doubt that I shall be able to 
 find out if you wish to know," he answers 
 gravely ; " for I think he must be as much 
 an acquaintance of yours as of mine, since 
 it was only at the Moat that I ever met 
 him." 
 
 He had thought that Mrs. Le Marchant 
 was already as colourless as a woman could 
 be ; but as he speaks, he sees her face 
 take on a new degree of pallor. She 
 struggles unsteadily to her feet. 
 
 " It is — it is getting late!" she says in- 
 distinctly ; "we — ought — to be — going 
 home !" 
 
 Even as she speaks she makes an un-
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 certain step forward, but it is so uncertain 
 that he catches her by the arm. 
 
 " You are not fit to move yet," he 
 says with kind imperativeness ; " rest five 
 minutes longer ; it is not late, really — the 
 sun is quite high still." 
 
 Convinced, either by the young man's 
 eloquence, or, as is more likely, by the 
 shaking of her own limbs, Mrs. Le 
 Marchant sits down again. Elizabeth has 
 risen to her feet, and now stands beside 
 her mother. She has said nothing, but he 
 can see her trembling from head to heel. 
 He hears her voice now addressing him, 
 but in so subdued a key that her words 
 are almost lost in the low blowing of the 
 faint south wind that is fondling the blades 
 of the unshorn grass. 
 
 " Did you say that he was gone? Are 
 you sure of it ?" 
 
 " Yes, yes, quite sure! I saw him 
 
 go-" 
 
 " Did you — did you happen to hear 
 
 where he was staying ?" 
 
 " No, but" — with the greatest eager-
 
 236 ALAS! 
 
 ness — " I can easily find out ; nothing can 
 be simpler." 
 
 Elizabeth is standing quite close to him, 
 so close that he can see her poor little 
 heart leaping under the thin white gown, 
 whose simple finery had piqued him earlier 
 in the day. She has apparently, in her 
 new terror, forgotten that there is any 
 cause for concealing from him the occasion 
 of it. She turns instinctively to him, as a 
 hurt child to the nearest bystander. It 
 seems to him the most natural thing in the 
 world that she should. They are both 
 recalled to themselves by her mother's 
 voice. 
 
 " You must think that we have lost our 
 wits," she says with a sickly smile ; " but 
 even if we have, I do not know what right 
 we have to impose upon a — a comparative 
 stranger like you, the task of helping us to 
 gratify our — our idle curiosity." 
 
 " But I am not a comparative stranger !" 
 cries Jim vehemently ; by this time — he 
 does not know how — he is holding a hand 
 of each of the trembling women in his.
 
 AMELIA. 237 
 
 " I am not a stranger at all ! I am a 
 friend ! Why will not you treat me as 
 one ? Why will not you let me help 
 you r 
 
 He glances with pitying, affectionate 
 eagerness from one to other of the woe- 
 begone faces on either side of him. The 
 tears have come in sudden flood to the 
 elder woman, and are pouring over her 
 white cheeks, stopping the passage of her 
 voice ; but Elizabeth's fair eyes are drearily 
 dry, and speech comes clear and hopeless 
 from her. 
 
 "You are very good to us!" she says, 
 giving the hand that holds hers a little 
 pressure, which he feels to be as cold as it 
 is grateful ; " at least, I see that you want 
 to be very good to us if we would let 
 you ; but as to helping us " — with a slight 
 despairing shrug — " no one can do that ; 
 no one but God, and sometimes " — draw- 
 ing a long, half-sobbing breath — " I think 
 that it would pass even His power."
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 There are few things more difficult than 
 when one's mind is full of the interests, 
 cares, and sorrows of one set of friends, to 
 have to empty it suddenly of them, and 
 refill it as suddenly with the entirely dif- 
 ferent, and perhaps discrepant interests, 
 cares, and sorrows of an altogether alien 
 set. 
 
 Seldom in the course of their old and 
 tried friendship has Jim Burgoyne felt less 
 disposed for the company and conversation 
 of his valued ally, Mrs. Byng, than when 
 he knocks at the door of her sitting-room 
 on the morning following the excursion to 
 Certosa. He cannot talk to her about the 
 Le Marchants, seeing that she has never
 
 AMELIA. 239 
 
 even heard of their existence ; and if out 
 of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh, his talk upon any other topic 
 must be scant and jejune indeed. The 
 only cheerful side which his prospective 
 visit turns to him is, that if he were not 
 with Mrs. Byng, he would be with Amelia ; 
 and that the friendlily indifferent eyes of 
 the former will, at all events, be less likely 
 than the hungrily loving ones of the latter 
 to detect that he has not slept a wink, and 
 that he has not the remotest idea what he 
 is talking about. If he were to follow his 
 inclination, he would be bestowing his 
 company this morning upon neither friend 
 nor sweetheart, but would be ransacking 
 Florence for the piece of information he 
 had yesterday promised those two woebe- 
 gone women to procure for them. Even 
 into the very midst of his heart-felt sore 
 compassion for them, there pierces a 
 shamed unwilling flash of elation at the 
 thought of what a stride to intimacy his 
 being entrusted with this commission 
 implies, of what an opening to indefi-
 
 240 ALAS ! 
 
 nitely numerous future visits it affords. 
 His determination to conduct the search 
 is at present a good deal more clearly 
 defined than the method in which that 
 search is to be effected. He can consult 
 Galignani as to the names and where- 
 abouts of new arrivals ; but they could 
 do that much for themselves. He could 
 examine the visitors' books of the different 
 hotels ; but Florence, though a little city, 
 is rich in hostelries, and this course would 
 take time. He could consult Mr. Greenock, 
 the head and fount of all Florentine gossip, 
 and who, since he had seen him in conver- 
 sation with the object of his inquiries, 
 would probably be able to satisfy them ; 
 but his acquaintance with the good-natured 
 newsmonger is not sufficiently intimate for 
 him to be able to pay him a morning 
 visit with any air of probability of having 
 been impelled thereto by a desire for his 
 company ; and, moreover, he shrinks with 
 a morbid fear from any action which may 
 lead, however obliquely, to his being him- 
 self apprised of the terrible secret which —
 
 AMELIA. 241 
 
 it is no longer mere matter of conjecture — 
 lies couched somewhere in those two poor 
 creatures' past. 
 
 And meanwhile he knocks at Mrs. 
 Byng's door, and is quickly bidden enter 
 by a cheerful English voice, the welcoming 
 alacrity of whose tones shames his own 
 want of pleasure in the meeting. But he 
 is too unfortunately honest to express a joy 
 he does not experience, and only says, with 
 a slight accent of reproach as he takes her 
 ready hand, heartily held out : 
 
 " You should not spring these surprises 
 upon us." 
 
 She laughs a little guiltily. 
 
 " It — it was a sudden thought ; you see 
 I — I had never seen Perugia." 
 
 He laughs too. " Poor Perugia ! I 
 think it would have blushed unseen for 
 a good many more years if you had not 
 begun to doubt the efficiency of my 
 chaperonage. Confess ! you have come 
 to look after the precious baby-boy, have 
 not you ?" 
 
 His tone is, as he himself feels, not quite 
 
 vol. 1. 16
 
 242 ALAS! 
 
 a pleasant one ; but the mother is scarcely 
 more prone to take offence than the son ; 
 and she answers with an amiably hasty 
 disclaimer : 
 
 "It was not that I felt the least want of 
 confidence in you — you must not think 
 that ; but — but I had one of my presenti- 
 ments ! you know that I am always a little 
 superstitious ; and three nights running an 
 owl came and hooted quite close under my 
 window !" 
 
 " As long as I have known your wood, 
 it has had owls ; and as long as I have 
 known them, they have hooted." 
 
 "In the wood, yes, of course, and I like 
 to hear them ; but this one was close under 
 my window." 
 
 Jim's only answer is to lift his hands and 
 shoulders in protest against his friend's 
 weak-mindedness. 
 
 " I had quite made up my mind that 
 something had happened," continues she, 
 not much abashed by his scorn; "and it 
 was the greatest relief when I first caught 
 sight of him at the station yesterday, look-
 
 AMELIA. 243 
 
 ing just as usual, a little thinner perhaps — 
 does not he strike you as a little thin ? 
 Has he been weighed lately ? He gives 
 me the idea of having lost a pound or two 
 since I last saw him. Is there a weighing- 
 machine in the hotel ?" 
 
 44 It will be very easy to ascertain." 
 
 44 And how is Amelia?" — her cheerful 
 eyes resting in friendly and half-inquisitive 
 interest on his sombre face. 
 
 41 Amelia is very well, thank you." 
 
 44 Amelia Wilson still ?" 
 
 44 Yes." 
 
 44 For how long?" — laughing — ''another 
 ten years, I suppose ?" 
 
 44 For three months, I believe ; we are 
 to be married as soon as they return to 
 England." 
 
 44 You do not say so?" — with an accent 
 of lively and delighted incredulity — 
 "hurrah! poor Amelia! 4 Tout vient a 
 point a qui sait attendre ; and she has su 
 attendre with a vengeance, has not she ?" 
 
 44 She is not going to attendre any more," 
 replies Jim drily. 
 
 16 — 2
 
 244 ALAS I 
 
 " Then I shall have to give you a 
 present, I suppose !" cries Mrs. Byng, still 
 with that delighted accent. " Something 
 useful, I have no doubt. I feel sure that 
 Amelia would like something useful ; why 
 should not we choose it to-day ? Florence 
 is an ideal place for buying presents ; do 
 you think that Amelia would spare you to 
 me for a whole morning ?" 
 
 Jim hesitates. It is not that he has any 
 doubt as to Amelia's cheerful renunciation 
 of any portion of his time that he may see 
 fit to abstract from her ; but the occupa- 
 tion suggested — that of squiring Mrs. Byng 
 — is not that to which he had purposed 
 devoting his forenoon. She sees his un- 
 readiness to answer, and attributes it to a 
 wrong cause. 
 
 " Amelia will not?" cries she in a tone 
 of surprise and disappointment. "Well, I 
 could not have believed it of her ! Not 
 even if you told her that it is on purpose 
 to buy her a present ?" 
 
 Jim breaks into an unavoidable smile. 
 "How frightfully quickly your mind moves !
 
 AMELIA. 245 
 
 It leaps like a kangaroo ! I never said that 
 she would not resign the precious boon of 
 my society ; on the contrary, I am sure 
 that nothing would give her greater plea- 
 sure, but — but — what will Willy say to my 
 monopolizing you ?" 
 
 At the excessive disingenuousness of 
 this speech his conscience gives him a 
 severe prick, recalling to his mind the 
 attitude of prostrate affliction — stretched 
 face downwards on his bed — in which his 
 young friend had received the news of his 
 parent's prospective approach. A light 
 cloud passes over that parent's sunny face. 
 
 " Willy has an engagement this morn- 
 ing," she answers more slowly, and with 
 less radiance than has hitherto marked her 
 utterances ; " nothing could be sweeter and 
 dearer than he was, and he is going to take 
 me somewhere this afternoon — to Fiesole 
 or Petraia, or somewhere else delightful ; 
 but this morning he has an engagement. 
 He did not tell me what it was, and I did 
 not like to tease him with questions. You " 
 ■ — with a rather wistful glance of interroga-
 
 246 ALAS/ 
 
 tion at her companion — " do not happen to 
 know what it is ?" 
 
 Jim shakes his head, while a rather 
 deeper shade than habitually lies upon it 
 settles on his careworn forehead. It is 
 perfectly true that he knows nothing of 
 young Byng's engagement, but yet he has 
 a shrewd suspicion to what quarter of the 
 town that engagement will lead him. 
 
 " So that I rather counted upon you," 
 continues Mrs. Byng, turning with a some- 
 what crestfallen air to the window. 
 
 " And you did not count in vain," replies 
 Burgoyne, with a sort of forced gallantry. 
 It has flashed upon him that he will have 
 to consent under penalty of giving a 
 detailed account of the reasons for his 
 inability, and that therefore he had better 
 make a virtue of necessity, and do it with 
 a good grace. After all, the deferring for 
 a couple of hours of his researches cannot 
 be of any great consequence to the persons 
 in whose behalf those researches are set on 
 foot. To a suspicious ear there might be 
 something dubious in the sudden and
 
 AMELIA. 247 
 
 galvanized alacrity of his assent ; but not 
 a shadow of doubt crosses Mrs. Byng's 
 mind as to her old and tried ally being as 
 pleased to avail himself of an opportunity 
 for enjoying her society as he has always 
 showed himself during the twenty years 
 and more of their acquaintance. 
 
 Protected by this happy misconception, 
 she sets off, all smiles, though at the outset 
 of the expedition she finds that she has to 
 modify her project ; and that Burgoyne 
 shows himself restive as to bric-a-brac 
 shops, and declines peremptorily to be any 
 party to buying himself a wedding present. 
 He puts his objection upon the semi-jocose 
 ground that he shall be unable to avoid 
 overhearing the price of her intended gift, 
 and that his modesty could not stand the 
 strain of helping her to haggle over it. 
 Perhaps, however, deep in his heart is an 
 unconscious feeling that to receive nuptial 
 offerings gives an almost greater body and 
 certainty to his on-striding fate than even 
 the buying of dinner-services and sauce- 
 pans. So they go to the Accademia delle
 
 248 ALAS! 
 
 Belli Arti instead, it having occurred to 
 Jim that in a picture - gallery there will 
 be less opportunity for conversation, less 
 opening for interested inquiries on his 
 companion's part as to Amelia and the 
 minutiae of his future life with her, than 
 there would be in the green walks of the 
 Cascine, or on the slopes of Fiesole. 
 
 To Mrs. Byng, who is of almost as 
 enjoying a nature as her son, and whose 
 spirits have been raised to a pitch even 
 higher than their usual one, by the dis- 
 proof of her presentiments, it is all one 
 where she goes, so that she is taken some- 
 where, to see something. They stare up 
 at the big young David, and stand before 
 Fra Angelico's ineffably happy Paradiso, 
 which yet brings the tears to the looker's 
 eyes, perhaps out of sheer envy of the 
 little blissful saints dancing and frolicking 
 so gaily, or pacing so softly in the assured 
 joy of the heavenly country. They look 
 at Botticelli's " Spring," fantastic wanton, 
 with her wildly-flowered gown, and her 
 lapful of roses. The room in which she
 
 AMELIA. 249 
 
 and her joyous mates stand, with their odd 
 smiles, is one of the smaller of the gallery. 
 It is rather a narrow one, and has an open 
 window, giving upon a little court, where, 
 in a neglected garden-close, wallflowers are 
 growing, and sending in their familiar per- 
 fume. The sweet Francia saints in the 
 picture hung on the wall directly opposite, 
 and the rapt Madonna, must surely smell 
 them. If they do not, it must be because 
 a young couple, he and she, who are lean- 
 ing out in their eagerness to enjoy it, 
 have intercepted all the homely fragrance. 
 Jim's eyes are still on the " Spring," and 
 he is thinking half absently how little kin- 
 ship she has with the goitered green 
 women, whom his nineteenth-century dis- 
 ciples present to the confiding British 
 public as representatives of Sandro Botti- 
 celli's manner, when his attention is 
 diverted bv hearing: the voice of M 
 Bvno - at his elbow addressing him in an 
 excited tone : 
 
 " Why. there's Willy ! Do not you see ? 
 There ! leaning out of that window, and
 
 250 ALAS! 
 
 who — who is the lady whom he has with 
 him ?" 
 
 Jim looks quickly in the direction indi- 
 cated, and at once recognises a slender 
 gray figure which to-day has not assumed 
 its white holiday gown. Elizabeth, whom 
 he had been pitifully picturing lying heart- 
 struck on a sofa in the seclusion of her 
 own little entresol, probably with lowered 
 blinds and tear-smarting eyes, is leaning 
 on the window-ledge with her back to the 
 pictures — she whom he had always credited 
 with so delicate a sensibility for Art, with 
 her back to the pictures, as if the live 
 picture which Byng's eager face presents 
 to her pleases her better. A sense of 
 indignation at having been tricked out of 
 his compassion — who had ever seemed to 
 need it less than the suave little figure 
 about whose blonde head a Tuscan sun- 
 beam, stolen through the casement, is 
 amorously playing — makes him forget to 
 answer the question addressed to him, 
 until it is repeated in a still more urgent 
 key.
 
 AMELIA. 251 
 
 " Who is she ? Who can she be ? 
 Have not you an idea? He has not seen 
 us ! Had not we better creep quietly 
 away ? Most likely he would rather not 
 meet me ; I could not bear to make him 
 look foolish !" 
 
 The suggestion that there can be any- 
 thing calculated to put Willy to the blush 
 in being discovered in conversation with 
 Miss Le Marchant has the effect of giving 
 Burgoyne rapidly back his power of speech. 
 
 11 What nonsense !" he cries almost 
 rudely ; "I wish you would not let your 
 imagination run away with you so, and of 
 course I know who she is ; she is an — 
 an acquaintance of mine. I — I presented 
 Willy to her ; she is Miss Le Marchant." 
 
 " Miss Le Who ?" repeats the mother 
 eagerly, catching the name imperfectly, as 
 we usually do a name that is unfamiliar to 
 us, proving how much of imagination and 
 memory must go to eke out all our hearing 
 — " an acquaintance of yours, is she ? Oh,
 
 ALAS! 
 
 " All right !" echoes Jim, with an un- 
 conscious snappishness of tone, greater 
 than he would have employed in defence 
 of the reputation of any other lady of his 
 acquaintance, probably because, ever since 
 the day when he stood an unwilling eaves- 
 dropper by that well on Bellosguardo, a 
 hideous low voice has been whispering to 
 his own sick heart that perhaps she is not 
 " all right!" ''All right! of course she is 
 all right." 
 
 " But she is lovely !" cries Mrs. Byng, 
 not paying much heed to the testy em- 
 phasis of her companion's asseveration, and 
 continuing to stare at the unwitting girl ; 
 "what a dear little face! but," the alarm 
 returning again into her voice, "is it pos- 
 sible that she is here alone with him ? If 
 so, of course she is American. Oh ! do 
 not say that she is American." 
 
 " Of course she is not," answers Bur- 
 goyne, half laughing at the plaintive 
 intensity of this last appeal; "of course 
 she is all that there is of most English, and 
 there is her mother, as large as life, within
 
 AMELIA. 253 
 
 a yard and a half of her ; there, do not you 
 see ? looking at the Ghirlandajo." 
 
 Mrs. Byng removes her eyes from the 
 daughter, and fixes them with a scarcely 
 less degree of interest upon the then indi- 
 cated parent. 
 
 " So that is the mother, is it ? a very 
 nice-looking woman, and what beautiful 
 
 white hair. Mrs. Le what did you 
 
 say their name was ? Ah ! Willy has seen 
 us, poor boy!" — laughing — "how guilty he 
 looks ! here he comes !" 
 
 And in point of fact the young man, 
 having given a very indubitable start and 
 said something hurried to his companion, 
 is seen advancing quasi-carelessly to meet 
 the two persons, the object of whose 
 observation he has for some minutes so 
 unconsciously been. 
 
 "Is not this a coincidence ?" cries Mrs. 
 Byng, with a rather nervously -playful 
 accent ; "it is a coincidence, though it 
 may not look like one ! But do not be 
 afraid ; we know our places, we are not 
 going to offer to join you !"
 
 254 ALAS! 
 
 u What should I be afraid of?" replies 
 the young man, the colour — always as 
 ready as a school miss's to put him to 
 shame — mantling in his handsome smooth 
 cheeks. "I am like the Spanish hidalgo, 
 who never knew what fear was till he 
 snuffed a candle with his fingers. So you 
 and Jim are having a happy day among 
 the pictures. Do not you like ' Spring ' ? 
 I love her, though I am sure she was a 
 real baggage !" 
 
 But this ingenious attempt to divert the 
 current of his parent's ideas into another 
 channel is scarcely so successful as it 
 deserves. 
 
 "Will not you introduce me to her?" 
 she asks eagerly, and not heeding, evi- 
 dently not even hearing, the empty 
 question contained in the last half of his 
 speech ; ll does she know that I am your 
 mother ? Will not you introduce me to 
 her r 
 
 It seems a simple and natural request 
 enough, and yet the young man per- 
 ceptibly hesitates. He even tries to turn
 
 it off by a clumsy and 
 jest. 
 
 " Introduce you t 
 1 Spring ? I am re 
 acquaintance with fa 
 such a liber: 
 
 I :»ok of - -* annoy- 
 
 ance cloucir ".eerful e g 
 
 g \ce. 
 u Is that a jc 
 a rath- 
 
 : Wc I most 
 
 to you then : you car. 
 g me to 
 M Of course r. 
 • 
 contra- 
 
 ace * I 
 
 shall be delighted. 
 
 trouble " g 
 As she s s Mrs* Le Mar- 
 
 nit and 
 
 httk g ; : but it is soon ape 
 
 this mem no
 
 256 ALAS! 
 
 means owing to any wish or even willing- 
 ness to make Mrs. Byng's acquaintance. 
 It is indeed solely due to there being no 
 egress from the room at that end of it 
 where they have been standing, so that, 
 if they wish to leave it, they must neces- 
 sarily retrace their steps and pass the three 
 persons who are so busily discussing them. 
 They do this so quickly and with so reso- 
 lute an air of not wishing to be delayed in 
 their exit, bestowing a couple of such 
 smileless and formal bows upon the two 
 men, that it would have needed a much 
 more determined obstruction than either 
 of those gentlemen is prepared to offer to 
 arrest their progress. In a moment they 
 are through the doorway and out of sight. 
 Mrs. Byng looks after them, with her 
 mouth open. 
 
 11 They — they — are obliged to go home, 
 they — they are in a great hurry !" says the 
 younger man, observing the displeased 
 astonishment expressed by his mother's 
 countenance, and with a lame effort at 
 explanation.
 
 AMELIA. 257 
 
 " So they seemed when first we caught 
 sight of them," retorts she drily. 
 
 " They — they are not going out at all at 
 present, they — they do not wish to make 
 any fresh acquaintance : oh, by-the-bye, I 
 forgot something I had to say to — I will 
 be back in a moment !" 
 
 So saying, he shoots off in pursuit of the 
 retreated figures, and Mrs. Byng and her 
 escort are again left tete-a-tete. 
 
 " Are you quite sure that she is all 
 right?" asks the lady, looking at Jim with 
 a penetrating glance that he does not 
 enjoy ; " because, if so, why was she so 
 determined not to know me ?" 
 
 " How can I tell ?" answers he testily. 
 " Perhaps — who knows ?" — laughing un- 
 mirthfully — " perhaps she was not sure 
 that you were all right!" 
 
 vol. 1. ly
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " Tous les hommes se hai'ssent naturellement. Je 
 mets en fait que s'ils savaient exactement ce qirils 
 disent, les uns des autres, il n'y aurait pas quatre amis 
 dans le monde." 
 
 Although Mrs. Byng always speaks of 
 Miss Wilson as ''Amelia," and is ac- 
 quainted with every detail of that young 
 lady's uneventful history — thanks to a long 
 series of direct and interested questions, 
 addressed through a considerable number 
 of years, to her friend Jim, as to his 
 betrothed — she has no personal acquaint- 
 ance with the latter. She is so deter- 
 mined, however, to repair this omission, 
 now that so highly favourable an oppor- 
 tunity is presented as their common stay
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 259 
 
 in the same small city, that Jim is power- 
 less to hinder her from arranging a joint 
 expedition of the two parties — herself and 
 her son on the one side, and Jim with his 
 future wife and sister-in-law on the other, 
 to Careggi, on the afternoon of the same 
 day as he had witnessed her abortive 
 attempt to add Elizabeth Le Marchant 
 and her mother to the list of her acquaint- 
 ances. 
 
 Amelia is, for a wonder, free from home 
 claims, Sybilla being more than usually 
 bright, a kind friend having lately pro- 
 vided her with a number of the Lancet> 
 containing a detailed account of an opera- 
 tion, which it seems not over-sanguine to 
 expect she may herself be able to undergo. 
 We all have our Blue Roses, and to 
 "undergo operation," as she technically 
 phrases it, is Sybilla Wilson's Blue Rose. 
 Cecilia is likewise disengaged. The latter 
 circumstance is matter for not unmixed 
 rejoicing to Jim, Cecilia's future connection 
 with himself being too close for him to 
 relish the thought of her somewhat pro- 
 
 17 — 2
 
 260 ALAS! 
 
 nounced wooing of Byng being exposed in 
 all its naivete to the clear if good-humoured 
 eyes of Byng's mother. But in this he 
 wrongs Cecilia. The garden-party at the 
 villa on Bellosguardo had proved to her 
 that the fruit is hung too high for her 
 fingers to reach, and that philosophy, which 
 had enabled her genuinely to relish the 
 wedding-cake of the man who had jilted 
 her, now teaches her to lay to heart the 
 sarcastic advice offered her by Jim, to look 
 at the young man as poor women look at 
 diamonds. Beyond one or two trifling 
 gallantries, for which no one can judge her 
 harshly, she leaves him alone, even though 
 out of good-nature, and from inveterate 
 force of habit, he gives her several openings 
 to make love to him. 
 
 The day is one of even Italy's best, an 
 air as soft as feathers, and full of April 
 odours — a bright gay sun. The vines are 
 rushing into leaf; they that ten days ago 
 looked such hopeless sticks ; little juicy 
 leaves uncurling and spreading on each, 
 and the mulberry trees, round which they
 
 AMELIA. 261 
 
 twine, are rushing out too, at the triumphant 
 call of the spring. 
 
 The party being of the unmanageable 
 number five, has to be. divided between 
 two fiacres, whereof Mrs. Byng, in pur- 
 suance of her determination to know 
 Amelia, insists upon occupying the first 
 in tete-a-tete with Miss Wilson, while 
 Cecilia and the two men fill the other. 
 The latter makes but a silent load. Byng 
 is, for him, out of spirits, and finding that 
 Cecilia has virtually abandoned her suit, is 
 glad to lapse into his own reflections. His 
 example is followed by Jim, whose temper 
 is ruffled by being again obliged to defer 
 the quest he is still feverishly anxious to 
 pursue, despite the shock of the morning's 
 meeting at the Accademia. 
 
 They reach the villa, and leave their 
 vehicles, glad to think that two of the 
 perennially tired Florentine cab-horses will 
 have a pause of rest, and, having shaken 
 off a tiresome would-be laquctis de place, 
 desirous to embitter for them the sweet 
 day and place, they stray at will through
 
 262 ALAS! 
 
 the garden among the clipped laurels, the 
 cypresses, the gorgeous red rhododendrons, 
 while beds of mignonette sent forth such 
 a steady wave of poignant sweetness as 
 makes the sense ache with ecstasy of 
 pleasure ; and over the conservatory' hangs 
 a wistaria so old, so magnificent, with such 
 a Niagara of giant flower bunches, as takes 
 an English breath away. They go over 
 the villa itself, pass through the room, 
 and by the bed where Lorenzo, with the 
 grotesque grim face, Lorenzo the Magnifi- 
 cent, gave his last sigh. It would make 
 death even more difficult to face than he 
 is already, if one thought one should have 
 to meet him under such a catafalque. 
 
 As they issue out again from the house's 
 shadow into the sun-drenched garden, Mrs. 
 Byng joins Burgoyne, who is walking a 
 little apart. 
 
 " I like Amelia," she says confidentially, 
 " such a nice pillowy sort of woman ; not 
 too clever, and oh, Jim, poor soul, how 
 fond she is of you !" 
 
 It must always be pleasant to hear that
 
 AMELIA. 263 
 
 the one absolutely good thing which this 
 life has to offer is lavishly heaped upon us 
 by the person with whom we are to pass 
 that life ; and perhaps pleasure is the 
 emotion evidenced by the silent writhe 
 with which Jim receives this piece of 
 information. 
 
 " Not, of course, that she told me so 
 in so many words," continues his friend, 
 perceiving that her speech is received in 
 a silence that may mean disapproval of 
 any intrusion into the sanctuary of his 
 affections; u but one can see with half an 
 eye : poor Amelia, she beamed all over 
 when I said one or two little civil things 
 about you ! She worships the very ground 
 you tread on !" 
 
 He writhes again. " I hope that that is 
 one of your figures of speech," he answers 
 constrainedly. 
 
 The not unnatural result of the tone in 
 which he utters this sentence, no less than 
 the words themselves, is to quench the fire 
 of Mrs. Byng's benevolent eulogies ; and, 
 as she cannot at once hit upon another
 
 264 ALAS! 
 
 topic, and is by no means sure that her 
 countenance does not betray the rather 
 snubbed dismay produced by the reception 
 of her amenities, she is not sorry when Jim 
 presently leaves her. Being, however, of 
 a very sanguine disposition, and seeing him 
 a little later sitting peacefully on a garden- 
 seat beside his fiancee, she hopes that 
 her words, though not very handsomely 
 received at the time, may bear fruit later 
 for Amelia's benefit. " And he always 
 was very undemonstrative," she adds to 
 herself consolatorily. " Nobody would 
 have guessed that he was delighted to 
 see me this morning ; and yet, of course, 
 he was." 
 
 The sun is growing visibly lower, and 
 the Ave Maria comes ringing solemnly 
 from the city. The seat to which Jim has 
 somewhat remorsefully led his lady-love is 
 a stone bench, shaded by a honey-suckle 
 bower, close to a fountain. The fountain 
 is not playing now ; but round about it 
 first a marten wheels, dipping in the water 
 the end of her fleet wings ; then a little
 
 AMELIA. 265 
 
 bat prematurely flits, for it is still broad 
 daylight. Broad indeed and bounteous is 
 the daylight of Italy. Around them is the 
 lush unmown grass ; full of homely field- 
 flowers, butter-cups, catch -flies, daisies, 
 ragged robins, while from some bush near 
 by a nightingale is pouring out all the 
 infinite variety of her ravishing song. 
 She says so many different things that one 
 never can feel sure that one has heard 
 all that she has to say. Jim leans back 
 listening, with his hands behind his head, 
 steeped in a half-voluptuous sadness. He 
 is oppressed by the thought of Amelia's 
 great love. Is the nightingale's splendid 
 eloquence really the voice of the poor 
 dumb passion beside him, lent to Amelia 
 to plead her cause ? The high-flown poetry 
 of the idea fills his heart with an imagina- 
 tive yearning kindness towards her. He 
 is in the act of turning to face her, with a 
 more lover-like speech on his lips than has 
 hovered there for years, when Amelia her- 
 self anticipates him. 
 
 "And to think that it is only April!"
 
 266 ALAS! 
 
 she says, with an air of prosaic astonish- 
 ment. " Last April we had four inches of 
 snow on the front drive. It was when 
 Cecilia had the mumps." 
 
 " When Cecilia had the mumps ?" re- 
 peats Burgoyne in a rather dazed voice. 
 " I did not know that Cecilia had ever had 
 the mumps." 
 
 This is the form into which are frozen 
 the love-words that the nightingale and 
 the perfume of the Tuscan flowers and the 
 Ave Maria had so nearly brought to his 
 tongue. Had Amelia known what an un- 
 wonted burst of tenderness her unlucky 
 reminiscence had choked, she would have 
 regretted it probably with a good deal 
 deeper bitterness than would many a 
 woman with a happier gift of utterance. 
 But she is blessedly ignorant of what 
 Cecilia's mumps have robbed her, and 
 presently again strikes athwart the night- 
 ingale's song with the placid remark : 
 
 " I like your friend very much ; I think 
 that she is a very nice woman." 
 
 This time Burgoyne has no difficulty in
 
 AMELIA. 26- 
 
 responding immediately. Miss Wilson's 
 first speech had so effectually chased his 
 dreams that he can now reply with common- 
 place kindliness : 
 
 " She has just been button-holing me to 
 make the same confidence about you." 
 
 " And she is so fond of you," continues 
 Amelia. 
 
 He laughs. 
 
 41 She has just confided to me that so 
 are you ;" then, with a hurried change of 
 tone, in dread lest the last speech shall 
 call out some expression of the mute pent 
 passion always lurking in her patient eyes, 
 he adds lightly, " I seem to be very gene- 
 rally beloved !" 
 
 What effect the flat fatuity, as it seems 
 to Jim himself, of this last observation has 
 upon Amelia, does not appear, since she 
 receives it in silence ; and a^ain the Ave 
 Maria and the bird divide between them 
 the province of sound. 
 
 As the great sun droops, the honey- 
 suckle above their heads seems to give out 
 more generously its strong clean sweet-
 
 268 ALAS! 
 
 ness. The rest of the party have drifted 
 away out of sight and hearing ; but by- 
 and-by their voices are again heard and 
 their returning forms seen. As they draw 
 near, it appears that their original number 
 of three has been augmented by the addi- 
 tion of two men ; and a still nearer 
 approach reveals who the two men are. 
 Mrs. Byng leads the way, talking ani- 
 matedly to Mr. Greenock, who is evidently 
 an old acquaintance. Byng trails after 
 them by himself, and the rear is brought 
 up by Cecilia and a portly clerically-dressed 
 figure, whom Jim at once recognises as the 
 Devonshire clergyman, his failure in ob- 
 taining information about whom has 
 embittered and fidgeted his whole day. 
 Here then is the opportunity he has 
 sought brought to his very hand. And 
 yet his first feeling, as he sees the com- 
 placent priestly face, and the deliberate 
 black legs pacing beside Cecilia, is one of 
 dismay. There is nothing unlikely in the 
 supposition that he may have been pre- 
 sented to her at the garden-party at the
 
 AMELIA. 269 
 
 Bellosguardo villa ; and yet he now realizes 
 with a shock of surprise that they are 
 acquainted, and, if acquainted, then at 
 liberty to converse upon whatever subject 
 may best recommend itself to them. He 
 is absolutely powerless to put any check 
 upon their talk, and yet at this very 
 moment he may be narrating to her that 
 story which his own loyalty had forbidden 
 him to overhear. The first couple has 
 passed, so absorbed in eager question and 
 answer that they do not even see Bur- 
 goyne and his betrothed. Mrs. Byng left 
 London only three days ago, and Mr. 
 Greenock might return thither at any 
 moment that he chooses ; and yet they are 
 talking of it with a wistful fondness that 
 might have beseemed Dante questioning 
 some chance wayfarer to Ravenna as to 
 the prosperity of his Florence. The 
 second pair's voices are lower pitched, and 
 their topics therefore less easy to ascertain ; 
 yet by Cecilia's gratified and even hopeful 
 air they are evidently agreeable ones. 
 But though agreeable, there is no evidence
 
 270 ALAS! 
 
 of their being, by their riveting ear and 
 eye, of the nature he dreads. They also 
 are so absorbed in each other as to have 
 no attention to spare for the quiet silent 
 persons sitting on the stone bench. 
 
 Amelia looks after them with a bene- 
 volent smile. Her sense of humour is 
 neither keen nor quick, but there is a 
 touch of very mild sarcasm in her voice, 
 as she says, watching her sister's retreating 
 figure : 
 
 " Cecilia has found a new friend, a 
 clergyman again ; do you know what his 
 name is ?" 
 
 " I believe it is Burton or Bruton, or 
 something of the sort," replies Jim reluc- 
 tantly, feeling as if even in admitting 
 knowledge of the stranger's surname he 
 were letting out a dangerous secret. " I 
 should have thought that she had had 
 enough of the Church," he adds with a 
 very much more pronounced accent of 
 satire than Miss Wilson's. " She has not 
 taken my advice of sticking to the laity. 
 Shall we — shall we follow them ?"
 
 AMELIA. 27 t 
 
 This last suggestion is the result of a 
 vague, uneasy feeling that, by keeping 
 within earshot, he may exercise some check 
 upon their conversation. 
 
 "Why should we?" replies Amelia, for 
 once in her life running counter to a pro- 
 position of her lover's, and turning her 
 meek eyes affectionately upon him ; " we 
 are so well here, are not we ? and " — 
 laughing — "we should spoil sport." 
 
 As Jim can allege no adequate reason 
 for pursuing Cecilia and her latest spoil, 
 he has unwillingly to acquiesce, and to 
 content himself with following them with 
 his eyes, to gain what reassurance he can 
 from the expression of their backs. But 
 the peaceful if melancholy restfulness that 
 had marked the first part of his abode on 
 the stone seat is gone, past recall. He 
 moves his feet fid^etilv on the gravel ; he 
 gets up, and throws pebbles into the foun- 
 tain ; he snubs an officious little Italian 
 boy who brings Amelia a small handful 
 of flowers plucked out of the emerald 
 grass.
 
 272 ALAS/ 
 
 Amelia does not share her lover's 
 uneasiness, as indeed why should she ? 
 She puts the expected tip into the young 
 Tuscan's dirty brown hand, and leans her 
 head enjoyingly on the back of the stone 
 seat. 
 
 " I think I like to come to these sort of 
 places with you even better than to picture- 
 galleries," she says with an intonation of 
 extreme content. 
 
 "Do you, dear?" replies he absently, 
 with his uneasy eyes still searching the 
 spot at which Cecilia and her escort had 
 disappeared. "Of course you are quite 
 right : ' God made the country, and man 
 made the ' Ah !" 
 
 The substitution of this ejaculation for 
 the noun which usually concludes the 
 proverb is due to the fact of the couple 
 he is interested in, having come back into 
 sight, retracing their steps, and again ap- 
 proaching. It is clear as they come near 
 that the desire to explore the villa grounds 
 has given way, in this case, to the absorp- 
 tion of conversation. With a pang of
 
 AMELIA. 273 
 
 dread, Jim's sharpened faculties realize, 
 before they are within earshot, that they 
 have exchanged the light and banal civilities 
 which had at first employed them for talk 
 of a much more intimate and interesting 
 character. Cecilia is generally but an in- 
 different listener, greatly preferring to take 
 the lion's share in any dialogue ; but now 
 she is all silent attention, only putting in, 
 now and again, a short eager question, 
 while her companion is obviously narrating 
 — narrating gravely, and yet with a marked 
 relish. Narrating what ? Jim tells him- 
 self angrily that there are more stories 
 than one in the world ; that there is no 
 reason why, because Cecilia's clerical friend 
 is relating to her something, it must neces- 
 sarily be that particular something which 
 he dreads so inexpressibly ; but he strains 
 his ears as they pass to catch a sentence 
 which may relieve or confirm his appre- 
 hensions. He has not to strain them long. 
 It is Cecilia who is speaking, and in her 
 eagerness she has raised her voice. 
 
 " You may depend upon me ; I assure 
 
 VOL. I. l8
 
 274 ALAS! 
 
 you I am as safe as a church ; if I had 
 chosen I might have made a great deal of 
 mischief in my day, but I never did. I 
 always said that she had a history. I do 
 not pretend to be a physiognomist, but I 
 said so the first time I saw her. I knew 
 that they came from Devonshire. I assure 
 you I am as safe as a church !" 
 
 It is clear that the clergyman's hesita- 
 tion, already perhaps more coy than real, 
 is unable to withstand the earnestness of 
 Cecilia's asseverations of her own trust- 
 worthiness. He has already opened his 
 mouth to respond when an unexpected in- 
 terruption arrests the stream of his elo- 
 quence. Jim has sprung from his bench, 
 and thrust himself unceremoniously between 
 the two interlocutors. 
 
 " Come and see the wistaria," he says, 
 brusquely addressing the girl ; " you were 
 not with us when we were looking at it, 
 were you ? You were maintaining the other 
 day that wistaria has no scent ; come and 
 smell it !" 
 
 It is in vain that Cecilia protests that
 
 AMELIA. 275 
 
 she has already seen quite as much of the 
 wistaria as she wishes ; that she had never 
 denied the potency of its perfume ; that 
 her legs are giving way beneath her from 
 fatigue. Jim marches her relentlessly away, 
 nor does he again quit her side until he 
 sees her safely seated in the fiacre which 
 is to earn* her home. It is indeed his 
 portion to have a tctc-a-tctc drive back to 
 Florence with her. Byng having absently 
 stepped into the vehicle which bears the 
 other ladies. He draws a Ions: breath as 
 thev jog slowlv awav from the villa, leaving 
 the clergyman taking off his tall hat. with 
 a baffled and offended air of farewell. 
 He is conscious that Cecilia is swelling 
 beside him with feelings no less wounded, 
 even for some moments before she 
 speaks. 
 
 " You rather cut your own throat," she 
 says, in an affronted voice, " when you 
 interrupted me and Mr. Burton so rudely ; 
 he was on the point of telling me some- 
 thing; very interesting about your dear 
 friends the Le Marchants ; he knows all 
 
 iS — 2
 
 276 ALAS! 
 
 about them ; he has known Elizabeth ever 
 since she was a child." 
 
 Even across Jim's alarm and anxiety 
 there comes a flash of indignation and dis- 
 taste at the familiar employment of the 
 name that even to himself he only pro- 
 nounces on his heart's knees. 
 
 "Who is Elizabeth? Do you mean 
 Miss Le Marchant ?" 
 
 " Mr. Burton talked of her as ' Eliza- 
 beth,' " replies Cecilia, with a still more 
 offended accent at the rebuke implied in 
 his words ; " one naturally would of a 
 person whom one had known in short 
 frocks." 
 
 " And he — he told you something very 
 interesting about her ?" 
 
 " No, he did not," returns Cecilia snap- 
 pishly, "he had not the chance; he was 
 just beginning when you rushed in like a 
 bull in a china shop, and now " — in a key 
 of excessive vexation — " I shall probably 
 never have another chance of hearing, as 
 he leaves Florence to-morrow." 
 
 Jim's heart gives a bound. " Leaves
 
 AMELIA. 277 
 
 Florence to-morrow, does he ?" he repeats 
 eagerly. 
 
 " I do not know why you should seem 
 so delighted to hear it," rejoins Cecilia, 
 looking at him from under her smart hat, 
 with a mixture of surprise and resentment. 
 "I do not see anything particularly 
 exhilarating in losing an agreeable ac- 
 quaintance almost as soon as one has 
 made it !" 
 
 " Perhaps — perhaps it was a false alarm," 
 says Jim, set, to some extent, on his guard 
 by her evident astonishment at the keen- 
 ness of his interest in the subject ; 
 " perhaps " — beginning to laugh — "he 
 only said it to frighten you ; why do 
 you think that he is leaving Florence 
 to-morrow ?" 
 
 11 Because he told me so," answers she 
 impatiently; "he is at the Grande Bre- 
 tagne, and he was complaining of not 
 being comfortable there, and I was advis- 
 ing him to move to another hotel, and 
 he said, ' Oh no, it was not worth while, 
 as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.' '
 
 278 ALAS/ 
 
 Jim draws a long breath, and leans back 
 in his corner of the fiacre. He has gained 
 the information he sought. It has come 
 to his hand at the very time he was 
 chafing most at his inability to go in 
 quest of it. 
 
 " So your interruption was the more 
 provoking," continues Cecilia, her indig- 
 nation puffing out and ruffling its feathers 
 at the recollection of her wrongs, " as it 
 was our last chance of meeting ; however, 
 you cut your own throat, as he evidently 
 knew something very interesting about 
 your dear friends ; something which he 
 does not generally tell people, and which 
 he would not have told me only that he 
 saw at once I was no blab." 
 
 Jim shivers. He had only just been in 
 time then — only just in time to stop the 
 mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's 
 raiment. His companion looks at him 
 curiously. 
 
 " Are you cold," she asks, " or did a 
 goose walk over your grave ? Why did 
 you shiver ?"
 
 AMELIA. 279 
 
 He pulls himself together. " I was 
 shivering," he says, compelling himself 
 to assume the rallying tone in which he 
 is apt to address the girl beside him, 
 " at the thought of the peril I had saved 
 you from. My poor Cis, have not you 
 and I suffered enough already at the hands 
 of the Church ?" 
 
 She reddens. " Though I do not pre- 
 tend to any great sensitiveness on the sub- 
 ject, I think you have worn that old joke 
 nearly off its legs." 
 
 But during the rest of the drive she 
 utters no further lament over her lost 
 clergyman.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 It is past seven o'clock by the time that 
 the party breaks up at the door of the 
 Anglo-Americain, and the dusk is gaining 
 even upon the red west that, in the upper 
 sky, is insensibly melted into that strange 
 faint green that speaks, in so plain a 
 language, of past and future fine weather. 
 
 "Are you coming to look in upon us 
 to-night ?" asks Amelia, with a rather 
 wistful diffidence, as her lover holds out 
 his hand in farewell to her. 
 
 He hesitates. In his own mind he had 
 planned another disposition of his evening 
 hours to that suggested by her. 
 
 " What do you advise ?" he asks. " Shall 
 you spend the evening in the usual way ?"
 
 AMELIA. ::: 
 
 •• I suppose so." she answers. " I sup- 
 pose we shall read aloud : you know father 
 likes to make our evenings as like our 
 home ones as possible, and Sybilla 
 
 'Then it is no use my coming." inter- 
 rupts he hastily. " I should have no good 
 of you ;" then, seeing her face fall at his 
 alacrity in seizing a pretence for escape, he 
 adds, " but, of course, if you wish it. dear 
 
 — if it would give you any satisfaction 
 
 • But it would not," cries she precipi- 
 tately, anxious as usual to be, if possible, 
 beforehand with his lightest wish: '"when 
 you are by, I always lose my place — 
 lau^hin^ tremulouslv — "and father scolds 
 me ! Xo. you had far better not come. I 
 must not be greedy " — in a lower kev. " I 
 had quite half an hour, nearly three quarter^ 
 of you this afternoon." 
 
 Without trusting herself to anv further 
 speech, she disappears, and he, with 
 a si^h that is onlv half of relief, turns 
 away from the hotel door. and. a:":rr 
 a moment's hesitation, a moments glance 
 at the suave darkening sky, and another at
 
 282 ALAS/ 
 
 his watch, begins to walk briskly — not in 
 the direction of the Minerva. It is really 
 not late, not much beyond canonical calling 
 hours, and he is almost sure that they dine 
 at eight. His face is set in the direction 
 of the Piazza d' Azeglio, as he addresses 
 these reassuring remarks to himself. This 
 is no case of self-indulgence, or even of 
 friendly civility. It is a question of 
 common humanity. Why should he leave 
 them to endure their suspense for a whole 
 night longer than they need, merely to 
 save himself the trouble of a walk beneath 
 the darkly splendid sky-arch, through the 
 cheerful streets, still full of leisurely foot- 
 passengers, of the sound of cracking whips 
 and rolling carriages ? 
 
 He reaches No. 12 bis, and finds the 
 porter's wife sitting at the door of her loge, 
 and smiling at him with all her white teeth, 
 as if she knew that he had come on some 
 pleasant errand. He climbs the naked 
 stone stairs, and rings the bell. It is 
 answered by Annunziata, who, smiling 
 too, as if she were saying something very
 
 AMELIA. 283 
 
 agreeable, conveys to him that the signora 
 and the signorina are out. 
 
 The intelligence baffles him, as he had 
 not at all expected it. Probably his dis- 
 concertment is written not illegibly on his 
 features, as Annunziata begins at once to 
 inform him that the signore are gone to 
 drive in the Cascine, and that she expects 
 them back every moment. It is a good 
 while before he quite masters her glib 
 explanation, his Italian being still at that 
 stage when, if the careful phrase-book 
 question does not receive exactly the 
 phrase-book answer, the questioner is at 
 fault. But the smiling invitation of the 
 amiable ugly face, and the hospitably open 
 door — so different a reception from what 
 the old bull-dog of an English nurse would 
 have accorded him — need no interpreter. 
 After a moment's hesitation he enters. 
 He will wait for them. 
 
 It is not until he has been left alone for 
 a quarter of an hour in the little salon, that 
 he has time to ask himself nervously 
 whether the amount of his acquaintance
 
 2S4 ALAS! 
 
 with them, or the importance of the tidings 
 he brings, justifies his thus thrusting him- 
 self upon their evening privacy. The table 
 — since they have obviously but one sitting- 
 room — is spread for their simple supper — 
 a coarse white cloth, a wicker - covered 
 bottle of rough Chian wine, and a copper 
 pot full of delicately odorous Freesias. He 
 wanders restlessly about the room, looking 
 at the photographs. 
 
 Tom — can it be Tom ? — with a mous- 
 tache, Charles with a beard and a bowie- 
 knife. Rose dandling her baby, Miriam 
 hanging over her new husband — all his 
 little playfellows ! How far the wave of 
 time has rolled them away from him ! He 
 strolls to the window whence, at sunset, 
 the green shutters have been thrown back, 
 and stares out at the Piazza garden, where 
 the twilight is taking all the colour out of 
 the Judas flowers, thence to the piano 
 upon which Schubert's " Trockne Blumen " 
 stands open. Absently he repeats aloud 
 the song's joyous words : 
 
 " Der Lenz wird kommen, der Winter ist aus !"
 
 AMELIA. 2S5 
 
 Is her " Winter aus " ? Judging by the 
 look in her eyes, it has been a long and 
 cruel one. If he wishes to put the question 
 to her, she comes in just in time to answer 
 it — enters laggingly, as one tired, blinking 
 a little from the sudden crude lamplight 
 after the soft feather-handed dusk. She 
 is evidently unprepared to find anyone in 
 the room, and gives a frightened jump 
 when she sees a man's figure approaching 
 her. Even when she recognises him the 
 scared look lingers. It is clear that in her 
 sad experience surprises have been always 
 synonymous with bad news. The white 
 apprehension written on her small face 
 makes him so cordially repent of his in- 
 trusion, that his explanation of his presence 
 is at first perfectly unintelligible. 
 
 " I hope you will excuse my taking such 
 a liberty. I know that I had no business 
 to come in when I was told you were out," 
 he says incoherently, ''but — I thought — I 
 hoped — I had an idea — that you might be 
 glad to hear " 
 
 He stops, puzzled how to word his piece
 
 286 ALAS! 
 
 of intelligence, whether or not to name the 
 person whose presence, whose very exist- 
 ence had yesterday seemed to inspire with 
 such terror the woman before him. She 
 has sunk down upon a chair, holding her 
 hat, which she had taken off on entering 
 the room, nervously clutched in her hands, 
 the little waves of her hair, straightened 
 out by the night wind, invading her fore- 
 head more than their wont and giving her 
 an unfamiliar look. 
 
 " To hear what ?" asks Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant, who, following her daughter more 
 leisurely, has come in just in time to catch 
 the last few words of Burgoyne's speech 
 dissevered from their context. He begins 
 that speech again, still more stammeringly 
 than before. 
 
 11 I thought you might be glad to hear 
 that the — the inquiries you asked me — I 
 mean that I promised to make — that the 
 person relating to whom I — I made in- 
 quiries, leaves Florence to-morrow." 
 
 He hears a long sighing breath that may 
 mean relief, that may mean only distress
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 at the introduction of the subject, from the 
 chair beside him, while the elder woman 
 says in a low abrupt voice : 
 
 " To-morrow ? Are you sure ? How 
 do you know ?" 
 
 " He said so himself to-day." 
 
 " Have you met him ? Have you been 
 talking to him ?" 
 
 It seems to Jim as if there were a sharp 
 apprehension mixed with the abruptness of 
 her tone, as she puts the two last questions. 
 He makes a gesture of eager denial. 
 
 44 Heaven forbid ! I have taken great 
 care to avoid recalling myself to his 
 memory. I have no desire to renew my 
 acquaintance with him. I — I — hate the 
 sight of him !" 
 
 To an uninterested bystander there 
 would have been something ludicrous in 
 the boyish virulence of the expression of 
 hatred coming from so composed and 
 mature a man's mouth as Jim. But neither 
 of the two persons who now hear it are in 
 a position of mind to see anything ridicu- 
 lous in it.
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 " Then how do you know that it is true?" 
 
 "He told an — an acquaintance of mine ; 
 he was complaining of the discomfort of 
 his hotel, and, on her recommending him 
 to change it, he answered that it was not 
 worth while, as he was leaving Florence 
 to-morrow." 
 
 Again from the chair beside him comes 
 that long low sigh. This time there can 
 be no question as to its quality. It is as 
 of a spirit lifting itself from under a 
 leaden load. For a few moments no other 
 sound breaks the stillness. Then Mrs. Le 
 Marchant speaks again in a constrained 
 voice : 
 
 "We are extremely obliged to you for 
 having taken so much trouble for us, and 
 it must seem very strange to you that we 
 should be so anxious to hear that this — 
 this person has left Florence ; but in so 
 small a place one is sure to be always 
 coming into collision with those whom one 
 would rather avoid, and there are reasons 
 which — which make it very — painful to us 
 to meet him."
 
 AMELIA. 289 
 
 So saying, she turns away precipitately, 
 and leaves the room hastily, by another 
 door from that by which they both entered, 
 and which evidently communicates with 
 an adjoining bedroom. Elizabeth remains 
 lying back in her chair, looking as white 
 as the table-cloth. She is always white, 
 but usually it is a creamy white, like 
 meadow-sweet. Out of her eyes, however, 
 has gone the distressed look of fear, and 
 in them is dawning instead a little friendly 
 smile. 
 
 11 You must have thought us rather im- 
 postors when you saw us at the Accademia 
 this morning, after leaving us apparently 
 so shattered over-night," she says, with a 
 somewhat deprecating air. 
 
 11 I was very glad to find you so per- 
 fectly recovered," he replies, but he does 
 not say it naturally. When a person, 
 habitually truthful, slides into a speech 
 not completely true, he does it in a bung- 
 ling journeyman fashion ; nor is Burgoyne 
 any exception to this rule. 
 
 " I think we are a little like india-rubber 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 2Qo ALAS! 
 
 balls, mammy and I," continues Elizabeth ; 
 " we have great recovering powers ; if we 
 had not " (stopped for a second by a small 
 patient sigh) " I suppose that we should 
 not be alive now." 
 
 He does not interrupt her. She must 
 be a much less finely-strung instrument 
 than he takes her for if she does not 
 divine the sympathy of his silence, and 
 sympathy so much in the dark as to what 
 it sympathizes with as his, must needs 
 walk gropingly, if it would escape gins and 
 pitfalls. 
 
 " But we should not have gone out 
 sight-seeing this morning — we were not 
 at all in a junketing mood — if it had not 
 been for Mr. Byng ; he came in and took 
 us both by storm. It is difficult," her face 
 dimpling and brightening with a much 
 more confirmed smile than the tiny hover- 
 ing one which is all that Jim has been able 
 to call forth — " it is difficult to resist a 
 person who brings so much sunshine with 
 him — do not you find it so ? He is so very 
 sunshiny, your Mr. Byng. We like sun-
 
 AMELIA. 291 
 
 shine ; we — we have not had a great deal 
 of it." 
 
 It is on the very edge of his lip to 
 tell her that when he had known her 
 she had had and been nothing but sun- 
 shine. But he recollects in time her pro- 
 hibition as to the past, and restrains 
 himself. 
 
 " When you look so kind and inter- 
 ested," she cries impulsively, sitting up 
 in her chair, with a transparent little 
 hand on each arm of it, "I feel a 
 fraud." 
 
 She stops. 
 
 " I look interested because I feel inter- 
 ested," returns he doggedly ; " fraud or 
 not — but" (in a distressed voice) "do 
 not, even in joke call yourself ugly 
 names — fraud or not, you cannot hinder 
 me." 
 
 " Do not be interested in me," says she, 
 in her plaintive cooing voice, "we are 
 very bad people to get interested in, we 
 are not repaying people to be interested 
 in. I think — that perhaps " (slowly and 
 
 19 — 2
 
 292 ALAS/ 
 
 dreamily) " under other circumstances we 
 might have been pleasant enough. Mammy 
 has naturally excellent spirits, and so have 
 I ; it does not take much to make us 
 happy, and even now I often feel like poor 
 little Prince Arthur — 
 
 " ' By my Christendom, 
 So I were out of prison and kept sheep, 
 I should be as merry as the day is long.' 
 
 But then," sighing profoundly, "the moment 
 that we begin to feel a little cheerful, 
 something comes and knocks us down 
 again." 
 
 There is such a blank hopelessness in 
 the tone with which she pronounces the 
 last words, and, in his almost total ignorance 
 of the origin of her despair, it is so impos- 
 sible to put his compassion into fit words, 
 that he can think of nothing better than 
 to pull his chair two inches nearer her, 
 to assure her by this dumb protest of 
 how little inclined he is to accept her 
 warning. 
 
 " Are you sure that he is really gone — 
 going, I mean," she asks, in an excited
 
 £L 
 
 V-.v -■:-. j . ~_ :.-" ~ r. ~ ..:, is 
 
 -- ; — r_ Bu: hcrtLc^s -vh.cn :;~rj;r v 
 - — ..-., : -.--:. "c n .- "... "- :.-„..:_-: 
 
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 He *r~ i>:z z - _ 
 
 :-h;;hj i: -: r-^" lz :: : ;r7_::.r _ :cr 
 zc>: :.~i r-"-:-
 
 294 ALAS/ 
 
 which is his hotel, I can inquire there 
 to-morrow morning, and bring you word 
 at once." 
 
 " Could you, would you ?" cries she, 
 life and light springing back into her 
 dejected eyes at his proposal ; " but no," 
 with an accent of remorse, " why should 
 you ? Why should we keep you running 
 upon our errands ? What right have we 
 to take up your time ?" 
 
 "My time!' repeats he ironically. "I 
 am like the German Prince mentioned by 
 Heine, who spent his leisure hours — hours 
 of which he had twenty-four every day — 
 in " 
 
 " But if we do not rob you," interrupts 
 Elizabeth, looking at him in some surprise, 
 " we rob Miss — Miss Wilson. What will 
 she say to us ?" 
 
 " She will be only too glad," replies he 
 stiffly, a douche of cold water thrown on 
 his foolish heart by the little hesitation 
 which had preceded her pronunciation of 
 Amelia's name, showing that her interest 
 in him had not had keenness enough even
 
 AMELIA. 295 
 
 to induce her to master his betrotheds 
 appellation. 
 
 " Will she ?" rejoins Elizabeth, quite 
 ignorant of having given offence, and with 
 her eyes fixed rather wistfully upon his. 
 " How good of her ! and how unlike most 
 very happy people ! Happy people are 
 generally rather exacting ; but she looks 
 good. She has a dear face !" 
 
 He is silent. To hear the one woman's 
 innocent and unconscious encomiums of 
 the other fills him with an emotion that 
 ties his never ready tongue. She mistakes 
 the cause of his muteness. 
 
 "I am afraid I have vexed you," she 
 says, sweetly and humbly. " I had no 
 business to praise her to you ; it was like 
 praising a person to himself ; but do not 
 be angry with me — I did not mean to be 
 impertinent !" 
 
 One small fragile hand is hanging over 
 the arm of her hard lodging-house arm- 
 chair, and before he has an idea of what 
 his own intentions are, it is lying, without 
 any asking of its consent, in his.
 
 296 ALAS/ 
 
 " I will not — I will not let you say such 
 things," he says, trembling. " She is 
 good : she has a dear face : and I love 
 to hear you say so ! May I — may I bring 
 her to see you ?" 
 
 As he makes this request, he feels the 
 little lingers that are lying in his palm give 
 a nervous start ; and at once, quietly but 
 determinedly, the captive hand is with- 
 drawn. It and its fellow fly up to her 
 face, and together quite cover it from his 
 view. Though, as I have said, they are 
 small, yet, it being small too to match 
 them, they conceal it entirely. 
 
 M You will not say no ?" he cries 
 anxiously. " I am sure you will not say 
 no. I shall feel very much snubbed if 
 you do." 
 
 Still no answer. Still that shielded face, 
 and the ominous silence behind it. He 
 rises, a dark red spreading over his fea- 
 tures. 
 
 " I must apologize for having made the 
 suggestion. I can only beg you to forget 
 that it ever was made. Good-bve !"
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 He has nearly reached the door, when 
 he hears the frou-frou of her gown, and 
 turning, sees that her unsteady feet have 
 carried her after him, and that her face is 
 changing from crimson to white and back 
 again with startling rapidity. 
 
 11 I thought you would have understood," 
 she says faintly. " I thought that you 
 were the one person who would not have 
 misunderstood." 
 
 His conscience pricks him, but he is 
 never very quick to be able to own himself 
 in the wrong, and before he can brin^ 
 himself to frame any sentence that smacks 
 of apology and regret, she resumes, with a 
 little more composure and in a conventional 
 voice : 
 
 ' ' You know — we told you — even at 
 Genoa — that — that we are not going out. 
 that we do not wish to make any new 
 acquaintances !" 
 
 " I know/' replies he, with some indig- 
 nation, "that that is the hollow formal 
 bulletin you issue to the world in general, 
 but I thought — I hoped "
 
 298 ALAS/ 
 
 " Do not bring her to see me," she in- 
 terrupts, abandoning her effort for com- 
 posure, and speaking in a broken voice, 
 while her eyes swim in tears. " She — she 
 might be sorry — she — she might not like 
 it — afterwards !" 
 
 He looks back at her with an almost 
 terrified air. Is the answer to her sad 
 riddle coming to him thus ? Has he had 
 the brutality to force her into giving 
 it? 
 
 11 You have been so kind in not asking 
 me any questions, you have even given 
 up alluding to old times since you saw that 
 it hurt me ; but you must see — of course 
 you do — that — that there is something — 
 in me — not like other people ; something 
 that — that prevents — my — having any 
 friends ! I have not a friend in the world " 
 (with a low sob) " except my mother — 
 except mammy ! Do you think " (breaking 
 into a watery smile) " that it is very silly 
 of me, at my age, to call her ' mammy ' 
 
 still r 
 
 " I think," he says, " that I am one of
 
 AMELIA. 299 
 
 the greatest brutes out, and that I should 
 be thankful if someone would kick me 
 downstairs." 
 
 And with this robust expression of self- 
 depreciation, he takes his hat and departs. 
 
 END OF VOL. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. 
 
 /. D. &> Co.
 
 n
 
 ALAS!
 
 ALAS! 
 
 h novel 
 
 RHODA BROUGHTON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' ' RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' ' SECOND THOUGHTS, 
 'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART !' ' NANCY,' ' DOCTOR CUPID,' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON 
 RICHARD BENT LEY AND SON 
 
 publishers in ©rbinarg to ^cr .Jttajestn the G&xutn 
 
 1890 
 
 [All rights reserved}
 
 ALAS! 
 
 PART I 
 
 (continued). 
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 VOL. II. 20
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 " Ihr Blumen alle, Heraus ! Heraus !" 
 
 It was to German flowers that the above 
 hest was addressed. If they obey it, with 
 how much more alacrity do the Italian 
 ones comply with its glad command. It 
 is a week later, and now no one can say 
 that " the spring comes slowly up this 
 way." Vines, figs, and mulberries, all are 
 emulously racing out, and the corn has 
 added two emerald inches to its juicy 
 blades. The young plane - trees in the 
 Piazza d' Azeglio, so skimpily robed when 
 first Jim had rung the entresol bell of 
 No. 12, are exchanging their " unhand- 
 some thrift " for an apparel of plenteous 
 
 20 — 2
 
 ALAS/ 
 
 green, and a wonderful Paulownia is be- 
 ginning to hold up her clusters of gloccinia 
 bells. 
 
 Jim has watched the daily progress of 
 the plane-leaves from the low window of 
 No. 12's entresol. The daily progress? 
 Is it possible that he has been there every 
 day during the past week ? He asks him- 
 self this, with a species of shock ; and it is 
 with a sense of relief that he finds that one 
 whole day has intervened, during which he 
 had not heard the sound of the electric bell 
 thrilling through the apartment under the 
 touch of his own fingers. What can have 
 taken him there, every day but one ? He 
 runs over, in his mind, with a misgiving as 
 to their insufficiency, the reasons of his 
 visit. For the first he had had an excel- 
 lent excuse. Surely it would have been 
 barbarous not to have imparted to the 
 anxiously -watching pair the good news 
 that the object of their mysterious terror 
 has really and authentically gone ! On the 
 second day it seemed quite worth while to 
 take the walk, in order to tell them that he
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 has accidentally learned the clergyman's 
 destination to be Venice, and his intention 
 to return via Milan and the St. Gothard. 
 On the third day, being as near to them as 
 San Annunziata, it had seemed unfriendly 
 not to inquire after Mrs. Le Marchant's 
 
 neuralgia. On the fourth He is 
 
 pulled up short in his reminiscences. 
 Why had he gone on the fourth day ? 
 He can give no answer to the question, 
 and slides off from it to another. Which 
 was the fourth day ? Was it — yes, it was 
 the one on which the wind blew as coldly 
 east as it might have done across Salisbury 
 Plain's, naked expanse, and he had found 
 Elizabeth sitting on a milking-stool shiver- 
 ing over a poor little fire of green wood, 
 and blowing it with a pair of bellows. He 
 had helped her to blow, and between them 
 they had blown the fire entirely away, as 
 often happens in the case of unskilled 
 handlers of bellows, and Elizabeth had 
 laughed till she cried. 
 
 And meanwhile, how many times has he 
 been within the portals of the Anglo-
 
 ALAS! 
 
 Americain ? With all his arithmetic he 
 cannot make it more than twice. This 
 neglect of his betrothed, however, is not 
 of quite so monstrous a cast as at the first 
 blush it may appear. It is she herself who, 
 true to her life-long principle of shielding 
 him from all disagreeable experiences, has 
 forbidden him her door. He can aid her 
 neither to bandage her father's swollen foot 
 in the severe gout-fit under which he is 
 groaning, nor to allay Sybilla's mysterious 
 sufferings, which always display a marked 
 increase in acuteness whenever any other 
 member of the family shows a disposition 
 to set up claims as an invalid. Cecilia, 
 indeed, is ready enough to give her help 
 in nursing her father, but she has on former 
 occasions shown such an unhappy aptitude 
 for tumbling over his swathed and extended 
 leg, and upsetting his physic all over him, 
 that she is received with such objurgations 
 as his cloth will permit, so often as she 
 shows her short nose within his sick-room. 
 Only twice in a whole week. Can Amelia 
 have wished to be taken quite so literally
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 when she had bidden him stay away ? 
 There is only one answer possible to this 
 question, and he shows his consciousness 
 of it by at once raising himself out of the 
 chair in which he is sunk, and turning his 
 steps hastily towards her. 
 
 It is morning. The east wind is clean 
 gone, and the streets are full of the scent 
 of the innumerable lilies of the valley, of 
 which everybody's hands are full. He 
 stops a minute and buys a great sheaf for 
 a miraculously small sum, from one of the 
 unnumbered sellers. It shall make his 
 peace for him, if indeed it needs making, 
 which it has never done yet. He almost 
 smiles at the absurdity of the suggestion. 
 He finds Cecilia alone in the sitting-room, 
 Cecilia sitting by the window reading the 
 Queen. Upon her large pink face there is 
 a puzzled expression, which is perhaps to 
 be accounted for by the fact that the portion 
 of the journal which she is perusing is that 
 entitled " Etiquette," and under it are the 
 answers to last week's questions, upon nice 
 points of social law, which, if you do not
 
 8 ALAS! 
 
 happen to have read the questions, have 
 undoubtedly an enigmatical air, as in the 
 following instances : " Your husband takes 
 the Baronet's daughter, and you follow 
 with the Prince." — "We do not under- 
 stand your question — babies never dine 
 out," etc. 
 
 Upon Jim's entrance Cecilia lays down 
 her paper, and at once offers to go in 
 search of her sister, with whom she shortly 
 returns. He had been quite right. There 
 is no peace to make. Amelia greets him 
 with her usual patient and perfectly un- 
 rancorous smile, but his second glance at 
 her tells him that she is looking old and 
 fagged. It is only in very early youth 
 that vigils and worries and self-denials do 
 not write their names upon the skin. 
 
 " How — how pale you are !" he says. 
 If he had given utterance to the word that 
 hovered on his lips, he would have cried, 
 "how yellow !" 
 
 "It would be very odd if she did not," 
 says Cecilia with a shrug, looking up from 
 her " Etiquette," to which she has returned ;
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 "she has sat up three nights with father, 
 and last evening Sybilla bid us all good- 
 bye. You know she never can bear any- 
 body else to be ill, and when father has 
 the gout she bids us all good-bye — and 
 Amelia is always taken in and sheds 
 torrents of tears — do not you, Amelia ?" 
 
 Amelia has subsided rather wearily into 
 a chair. " She really thinks that she is 
 dying," says she apologetically — "and 
 who knows ? some day perhaps it may 
 come true." 
 
 " Not it," rejoins her sister, with an ex- 
 asperated sniff, " she will see us all out — 
 will not she, Jim ?" 
 
 " I have not the remotest doubt of it," 
 replies he heartily ; and then his conscience- 
 struck eyes revert to his betrothed's wan 
 face, all the plainer for its wanness. " No 
 sleep, no fresh air," in an injured tone, 
 checking off the items on his fingers. 
 
 " But I have had fresh air," smiling at 
 him with pale affection ; " one day Mrs. 
 Byng took me out for a drive. Mrs. Byng 
 has been very kind to me."
 
 io ALAS/ 
 
 She does not lay the faintest invidious 
 accent on the name, as if contrasting it 
 with another whose owner had been so 
 far less kind ; it is his own guilty heart 
 that supplies the emphasis. His only 
 resource is an anger which — so curiously 
 perverse is human nature — is not even 
 feigned. 
 
 "You can go out driving with Mrs. 
 Byng then, though you could not spare 
 time to come out with me," he says in a 
 surly voice. 
 
 She does not defend herself, but her 
 lower lip trembles. 
 
 " Come out with me now," he cries, 
 remorse giving a harshness even to the 
 tone of the sincerely- meant invitation. 
 "You look like a geranium in a cellar; 
 it is a divine day, a day to make the 
 old feel young, and the young immortal ; 
 come out and stay out with me all day. 
 I will take you wherever you like. I 
 will " 
 
 The genuine eagerness of his proposal 
 has tinged her sickly-coloured cheek with
 
 AMELIA. 11 
 
 a healthier hue for the moment, but she 
 shakes her head. 
 
 " I could not leave father this morning ; 
 he will not take his medicine from anyone 
 else, and he likes me to sit with him while 
 he eats his arrowroot." 
 
 The only sign of approval of this instance 
 of filial piety given by Jim is that he rises and 
 begins to stamp irritably about the room. 
 
 " He is really not at all exacting," con- 
 tinues Amelia in anxious deprecation ; "he 
 was quite pleased just now when I told 
 him that Mrs. Byng was going to take me 
 to a party at the Villa Schiavone this after- 
 noon. He said " 
 
 " Mrs. Byng ! Mrs. Byng again !" 
 
 This is not what Mr. Wilson said, but 
 is the expression of the unjust wrath which 
 Burgoyne, feeling it much pleasanter to be 
 angry with someone else than himself, is 
 artificially and not unsuccessfully fostering. 
 Again Amelia's lip quivers. 
 
 " I thought," she says gently, " if — if 
 you have no other engagement this after- 
 noon ; if — if you are free "
 
 12 ALAS! 
 
 Nothing can be milder than the form 
 which this suggestion takes, and yet there 
 is something in its shape that provokes 
 him. 
 
 " Free!" he interrupts tartly, " of course 
 I am free ! Have I a gouty father and 
 a hysteric sister ? Why should not I be 
 free ?" 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it," rejoins she 
 — the light that his first proposal to take 
 her out had brought into her face grow- 
 ing brighter and more established — 
 "because in that case there is nothing 
 to prevent your meeting us at the villa, 
 and " 
 
 " And seeing you and Mrs. Byng walk- 
 ing about with your arms round each 
 other's necks, like a couple of schoolgirls," 
 cries he, with a sort of spurious grumpi- 
 ness. 
 
 " I can't think why you should object to 
 Amelia walking about with her arm round 
 Mrs. Byng's neck," says Cecilia, whose 
 attention to her " Etiquette" is apparently 
 not so absorbing but that she has some to
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 *3 
 
 spare for the conversation going on in her 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 They all laugh a little ; and harmony 
 being restored, and Jim graciously vouch- 
 safing to forgive Amelia for having ignored 
 her for a sennight, she returns to her 
 patient, and he to his hotel, where he is 
 at once, contrary to his wish, pounced 
 upon by Byng. 
 
 For some reason, which he would be 
 puzzled to explain to himself, he has for 
 the last week rather avoided his friend's 
 company — a task rendered easier by the 
 disposition manifested by the young man's 
 mother to monopolize him, a disposition to 
 which Burgoyne has felt no inclination to 
 run counter. It is without enthusiasm that 
 he receives Byng's expressions of pleasure 
 in their accidental meeting. 
 
 " I have been searching for you, high 
 and low." 
 
 " Have you ?" 
 
 " Where have you been ?" 
 
 " I have been to the Anglo- Americain " 
 — with a flash of inward self-congratulation
 
 F4 ALAS! 
 
 at this query having been put to-day, 
 instead of yesterday, or the day before. 
 The other looks disappointed. 
 
 " To the Anglo- Americain ? I thought 
 — I hoped ; have you — seen them lately V 
 
 Burgoyne has ceased to feign lack of 
 understanding to whom the personal pro- 
 noun refers, and he answers with as much 
 carelessness as at a moment's notice he can 
 put on : " Why, yes, I have, once or twice." 
 
 " Do they — do not they think it strange 
 of me not to have been near them all this 
 time ?" 
 
 " They may do " — drily. 
 
 " They did not say so ?" 
 
 " They did not ; perhaps " — sarcastically 
 — " the subject was too acutely painful for 
 them to allude to." 
 
 Frequently as he has exposed himself to 
 them, his Mentor's sneers never fail to 
 send the crimson racing into Byng's face, 
 and it finds its way there now. It does 
 not, however, prevent his proceeding, after 
 a confused moment or two, with his anxious 
 catechism.
 
 AMELIA. 15 
 
 " She — she has not referred to the 
 subject ?" 
 
 " What subject ?" 
 
 " To — to me ?" 
 
 M She has never mentioned your name. 
 Stay " — his veracity winning a reluctant 
 victory over his ill-nature — " one day she 
 said that you were sunshiny, and that she 
 liked sunshine." 
 
 As he speaks he looks down at his boots, 
 too unaffectedly annoyed at the justification 
 of Elizabeth's epithet which its retailing 
 has worked on Byng's countenance, to be 
 able to contemplate him with any decent 
 patience. But there is enough evidence 
 in the boy's voice of the effect wrought 
 upon him by Miss Le Marchant's adjective 
 to make his comrade repent very heartily 
 of having repeated it. 
 
 " I should have been over," says Byng 
 in a low eager way, " every day, every 
 hour, as often as they would have received 
 me, only that I could not leave my mother ; 
 and she — she has taken them en grippe /" 
 
 " En grippe? Your mother?" repeats
 
 16 ALAS! 
 
 Jim, too honestly and disagreeably startled 
 by this piece of news to be able any 
 longer to maintain his ironical manner ; 
 "why?" 
 
 The other shrugs his shoulders dis- 
 piritedly. 
 
 " I have not an idea ; it cannot be 
 because they did not seem to wish to be 
 introduced to her at the Accademia the 
 other day ; she is quite incapable of such 
 pettiness, and she admired her so tremen- 
 dously at first, did not she ? You heard 
 her ; but since then she has taken it into 
 her head that there is something — I cannot 
 bear even to say it " — dashing his hat and 
 gloves vehemently upon the table — " some- 
 thing louche, as she calls it, about her. 
 Mother thinks that she — she — she " — sink- 
 ing his voice to an indistinct half- whisper — 
 " has — has gone off the rails some time or 
 other. Can you conceive?"- — raising his 
 tone again to one of the acutest pain and 
 indignation — " that anyone — any human 
 being could look in her face and harbour 
 such a notion for a single instant ?"
 
 AMELIA. 1 7 
 
 He stares with eyes ablaze with wrathful 
 pity at his friend's face, expecting an 
 answering outbreak to his own ; but none 
 such comes. Burgoyne only says, in a not 
 much more assured key than that which 
 the young man had employed : 
 
 " How — how can such an idea have got 
 into your mother's head ?" 
 
 " I do not know, but it is there ; and 
 what I wanted you, what I have been 
 searching everywhere for you for, is to ask 
 you to — to set her right, at once, without 
 any delay. It is unbearable that she should 
 go on thinking such things, and nothing 
 could be easier for you, who know them so 
 well, who know all about them !" 
 
 Burgoyne is at first too much stupefied 
 by this appeal, and by the impossibility of 
 answering it in a satisfactory manner, to 
 make any response at all ; but at length : 
 
 " Know all about them ?" he says, in a 
 voice whose surface impatience hides a 
 much profounder feeling. " Who dares 
 ever say that he knows all about any other 
 living soul ? How many times must I tell 
 
 VOL. II. 21
 
 iS ALAS! 
 
 you that, until we met at Genoa, I had not 
 set eyes on Miss Le Marchant for ten good 
 years r 
 
 At the tone of this speech, so widely 
 different from the eager acceptance of the 
 suggested task which he had expected, 
 Byng's face takes on a crestfallen, almost 
 frightened look. 
 
 " But when you knew them," he says. 
 " in Devonshire, they — they were all right 
 then, were not they ? they were well 
 thought of? — there was nothing against 
 them ?" 
 
 "Good Heavens — no!" replies Jim 
 heartily, thankful that the appeal is now 
 so worded as to enable him to give a 
 warm testimony in favour of his poor 
 friends. " There was not a family in all 
 the neighbourhood that stood so high. 
 Everybody loved them ; everybody had a 
 good word for them." 
 
 Byng's countenance clears a little. 
 
 " And there is no reason — you have no 
 reason for supposing anything different 
 now ?"
 
 AMELIA. 1 9 
 
 Jim stirs uneasily in his chair. Can he 
 truthfully give the same convinced affirma- 
 tive to this question as to the last ? It is 
 a second or two before he answers it at 
 all. 
 
 14 The facts of life are enough for me ; 
 I do not trouble myself with its supposi- 
 tions." 
 
 He gets up and walks towards the door 
 as he speaks, resolved to bring to an end 
 this to him intolerable catechism. 
 
 " But you must have an opinion — you 
 must think," cries the other's voice, per- 
 sistently pursuing him. He turns at bay, 
 with the door-handle in his hand, his eyes 
 lightening. 
 
 " I asked her permission to bring Amelia 
 to see her," he says, in a low moved voice ; 
 "if I had thought as ill of her as your 
 mother does, do you think I should have 
 done that ?" 
 
 21 — 2
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Camille. — " Que me conseilleriez-vous de faire le 
 jour oil je verrais que vous ne m'aimez plus ?" 
 
 There is no greater fiction than that for 
 time to go quickly implies that it must 
 needs go pleasantly. Jim has seldom 
 spent a more disagreeable period than 
 the hours which follow his conversation 
 with Byng, and which he passes in his 
 own bedroom, with his elbows on the 
 window-ledge, looking blankly out at the 
 Piazza, and at the great " Bride " of 
 Arnolpho's planning, the church of Santa 
 Maria Novella. And yet, when the city 
 clocks, which have chimed unnoticed by 
 him several times, at length convey to his 
 inattentive ear what the hour is, he starts
 
 AMELIA. 21 
 
 up, shocked and confused at its lateness. 
 He had meant to have reached the Villa 
 Schiavone in time to receive Amelia, and 
 now she must have long preceded him, 
 and be attributing his tardiness to some 
 fresh neglect and indifference. In five 
 minutes he has rearranged his dress, and 
 jumped into a fiacre. Through the Porta 
 Romana, and up between the straight row 
 of still and inky cypresses, up and up to 
 where the villa door, promising so little 
 and performing so much, opens as so many 
 do, straight upon the road. 
 
 The day has changed its ravishing blue 
 gaiety for a pensive cloudy gloom, and the 
 guests at the villa are walking about with- 
 out any sunshades. They are numerous, 
 though few indeed in comparison of the 
 Banksia roses on the laden wall, over 
 which, too, a great wistaria — put in, as the 
 host with a just pride relates, only last 
 year — is hanging and flinging its lilac 
 abundance. And seen above its clusters, 
 and above the wall, what a view from this 
 raised terrace ! Jim is really in a hurry to
 
 22 ALAS! 
 
 find Amelia, and yet he cannot choose but 
 stop to look at it — from Galileo's tower on 
 the right, to where, far down the plain of 
 the Arno, Carrara loses itself in mist. It 
 is all dark at first, sullen, purple -gray, 
 without variation or stir — city, Duomo, 
 Arno, Fiesole, and all her chain of sister- 
 hills — one universal frown over every slope 
 and jag, over street and spire, over Cam- 
 panile with its marbles, and Santa Croce 
 with its dead. But now, as it draws on 
 towards sun-setting, in the western sky 
 there comes a beginning of light, a faint 
 pale tint at first, but quickly broadening 
 across the firmament, while the whole huge 
 cloud canopy is drawn aside like a curtain, 
 and, as a great bright eye from under bent 
 brows, the lowering sun sends arrows of 
 radiance over plain, and river, and city. 
 All of a sudden there is a vertical rain of 
 dazzling white rays on the plain, and the 
 olive shadows, merged all the afternoon in 
 the universal gray, fall long and soft upon 
 the blinding green of the young corn. He 
 has forgotten Amelia. Oh, that that other,
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 that creature herself made out of sun ravs 
 and sweet rain-drops, were beside him, her 
 pulses beating, as they so surely would, to 
 his tune, her whole tender being quivering 
 with delicate joy at this heavenly spectacle. 
 
 Someone touches him on the shoulder, 
 and he starts violently. Has the intensity 
 of his invocation called her spirit out of her 
 light body, and is she indeed beside him ? 
 
 " What a bad conscience you must have ! 
 Did you think that I was a bailiff?" cries 
 Mrs. Byng, laughing. 
 
 "Where is Amelia?" he asks, rather 
 curtly, the memory of Byng's communica- 
 tion about his mother being too fresh in 
 his mind to make it possible for him to 
 answer her in her own rallying key. 
 " What have you done with Amelia ?" 
 
 " What a ' Stand - and - deliver ' tone !" 
 says she, laughing still, but looking not 
 unnaturally surprised. "Well, where is 
 she ?" glancing round. " She was here 
 five minutes ago with Willy. Poor 
 Amelia !" lowering her voice to a more 
 confidential key. " I am so glad you have
 
 24 ALAS! 
 
 come at last ; she is patience personified. 
 I must congratulate you upon the excellent 
 training into which you have got her, but 
 I think that she was beginning to look a 
 little anxious." 
 
 " And / think that you have been giving 
 the reins to your imagination, as usual," 
 replies he, walking off in a huff. 
 
 There is another delightful garden at 
 the back of the villa, and there, having 
 failed to find her in the first, he now with 
 growing irritation at her for not being more 
 immediately conspicuous, seeks Amelia. It 
 is a sheltered leisurely paradise, where white 
 rose-trees, with millions of bursting buds, 
 are careering over the walls in leafy luxuri- 
 ance, where double wallflowers — bloody 
 warriors, one should call them, if one 
 could connect any warlike idea with this 
 Eden of scented peace — stocks in fragrant 
 row are flowering as we Britons never see 
 them flower in our chary isle, save in the 
 plates of a Gardeners' Chronicle. But 
 among them he finds no trace of his 
 homely English blossom. He finds,
 
 AMELIA. 25 
 
 indeed, him who had been named as her 
 late companion, Byng ; but it is not with 
 Amelia, but with one of the pretty young 
 daughters of the house that he is pacing 
 the straight walk in lively dialogue. Jim 
 accosts him formally : 
 
 " I understood that Miss Wilson was 
 with you ? Do you happen to know 
 where she is ?" . . 
 
 Byng stops short in his leisurely pacing. 
 
 " Why, where is she ?" he says, looking 
 round, as his mother had done, but with a 
 more guilty air. " She was here five 
 minutes ago. Where can she have dis- 
 appeared to ?" 
 
 It is but too obvious that in greeting 
 and being greeted by their numerous 
 acquaintances, both poor Amelia's chaperon 
 and that chaperon's son have completely 
 forgotten her existence. Always nervously 
 afraid of being burdensome, Jim feels con- 
 vinced from what he knows of her character 
 that she is going about in unobtrusive for- 
 lornness, the extreme smallness of her 
 Florentine acquaintances making it un-
 
 26 ALAS/ 
 
 likely that she has found anyone to supply 
 the place of the friends who have become 
 so entirely oblivious of her. The convic- 
 tion, pricking his conscience as he hastens 
 contritely away from the vainly-repentant 
 Byng, lends speed and keenness to his 
 search. But thorough and earnest as it 
 is, it is for some time quite unsuccessful. 
 She makes one of no group, she loiters 
 under no Banksia rose-bower, she is no 
 gazer from the terrace at gold-misted 
 valley or aureoled town, she is to be 
 found neither in hidden nook nor evident 
 path. She is not beneath the loggia, she 
 is nowhere out-of-doors. She must then, 
 in her loneliness, have taken refuge in the 
 house. He finds himself in a long, noble 
 room, with a frescoed ceiling, a room full 
 of signs of recent habitation and recent tea, 
 but which has apparently been deserted 
 for the sunset splendours on the terrace. 
 He can see no single occupant. He walks 
 slowly down it to assure himself of the fact 
 of its entire emptiness. 
 
 By a singular and unaccountable freak
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 27 
 
 of the builders, the windows are set so 
 high in the wall that each has had to have 
 a little raised dais erected before it to 
 enable the inmates to look comfortably 
 out. Upon each small platform stands a 
 chair or two, and low over them the 
 curtains sweep. As he passes one recess, 
 he notices that the drapery is stirring a 
 little, and examining more closely, sees the 
 tail of a well-known gown — of that gown 
 which has met with his nearest approach 
 to approval among Amelia's rather scanty 
 stock — peeping from beneath the stiff rich 
 folds of the old Italian brocade. It is the 
 work of a second to sweep the latter aside, 
 and discover his poor fiancee all alone, and 
 crouching desolately in a low arm-chair. 
 There is something so unlike her in the 
 attitude, something so different from her 
 usual uncomplaining, unpretending forti- 
 tude, something so disproportioned to the 
 cause — his own careless but not criminal 
 delay, as he supposes — in the despair evi- 
 denced by her whole pose, that he feels at 
 once terrified and angry. In a second he,
 
 2S ALAS.' 
 
 too, has stepped up on to the little platform 
 beside her. 
 
 "Amelia!" he cries. "Amelia! What 
 are you doing up here ? With whom are 
 you playing hide-and-seek ?" 
 
 Her words and her smiles are apt to be 
 prompt enough, Heaven knows, to spring 
 out. answering his least hint ; but now she 
 neither speaks nor moves a muscle of her 
 face. She scarcely starts at all at his 
 sudden apparition and address, and no 
 light comes across her features — those 
 features which, now that he looks at 
 them more closely, he sees to be set in 
 a much more pinched pallor than even 
 three watching nights and a week of airless 
 worry can account for. 
 
 " Are you ill ?" 
 
 " No ; I am not ill." 
 
 The sting of irritation which, mixed 
 with genuine alarm, had besieged Jim's 
 mind on his first realizing her crouched 
 and unnatural attitude, now entirely super- 
 sedes any other feeling. Is the accidental 
 delay of half an hour, an hour, say even an
 
 AMELIA. 29 
 
 hour and a half, enough to justify such a 
 parade of anguish as this ? 
 
 11 Is it possible," he inquires, in a tone 
 of cold displeasure, "that I am to attribute 
 this — this state of things — to my being 
 accidentally late ? It was a mere accident : 
 it is not like you to make a scene. I do 
 not recognise you ; I am very sorry that 
 I was late, and that I have made you 
 angry." 
 
 The chill reproach of his words seems to 
 rouse her to a state more akin to her 
 natural one. to the humble and unexacting 
 one which is habitual to her. 
 
 "Angry!" she repeats: " angry with 
 you for being late ? Oh, you are quite 
 mistaken! In all these years how often 
 have I been angry with vou ?" 
 
 There is such a meek upbraiding in her 
 tone that his ill-humour gives way to a 
 vague apprehension. 
 
 11 Then what is it ?" he cries brusquely ; 
 " what is it all about ? I think I have a 
 right to ask you that ; since I saw 
 you last something must have happened
 
 30 ALAS! 
 
 to you to produce this extraordinary- 
 change." 
 
 She heaves a long dragging sigh. 
 
 " Something has happened to me ; yes, 
 something has happened !" 
 
 " But what — what kind of a something ? 
 I have a right to know — I insist upon 
 knowing ; tell me !" 
 
 He has grasped both her hands, whose 
 unnatural coldness he feels even through 
 her rather ill-fitting gloves. So strange 
 and mean a thing is human nature that 
 even at this moment it flashes across 
 him, with a sense of annoyance, what 
 bad gloves Amelia always wears. How- 
 ever, he is not troubled with them long, 
 for she takes them and her cold hands 
 quietly back. 
 
 " I will tell you, there is no question of 
 insisting. I should have told you anyhow ; 
 but not here " — glancing nervously round 
 the dropped curtains — " not now !" 
 
 V Why not here ? Why not now ?" 
 
 Her face quivers. 
 
 " I could not," she says piteously. " I
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 do not quite know how I shall get through 
 telling it ; it must be somewhere — some- 
 where where it will not matter if I do break 
 down !" 
 
 He stares at her in an unfeigned be- 
 wilderment, again slightly streaked with 
 wrath. 
 
 " Have you gone mad, Amelia ? or are 
 you taking a leaf out of Sybilla's book ? 
 If you do not clear up this extraordinary 
 mystification at once, I shall be compelled 
 to believe either the one or the other." 
 
 Again her face contracts with pain. 
 
 ' 'Oh, if it were only a mystification!" 
 she says, with a low cry. " I cannot tell 
 you here ; it is physically impossible to 
 me. But do not be afraid " — with an 
 accent of bitterness, which he is quite at a 
 loss to account for — "you shall not have 
 long to wait ; I will tell you, without fail, 
 to-morrow ; to-morrow morning, if you 
 like. Come as early as you please, I shall 
 be ready to tell you ; and now w r ould you 
 mind leaving me ? I want to have a few 
 moments to myself before I see anybody —
 
 ALAS! 
 
 before I see Mrs. Byng ; will you please 
 leave me ?" 
 
 It is so apparent that she is in deadly 
 earnest, and resolute to have her request 
 complied with, that he can do nothing but 
 step dizzily down off the little dais, feeling 
 as if the world were turning round with 
 him. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later he sees her 
 leaving the party with Mrs. Byng, looking 
 as simple, as collected, and not very per- 
 ceptibly paler than usual.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 There is always something in the nature 
 of a mountain in a night that is interposed 
 between us and either any promised plea- 
 sure or any threatened pain. In the case 
 of pleasure, we are naturally in a hurry to 
 scale it, in order to see how full of sunshine 
 and flowers is the happy valley on the 
 other side ; and in the case of pain, we are 
 all scarcely less eager to ascertain how 
 deep is the abyss, how choking the swamp, 
 how angry the waves that wait us beyond 
 the dusty hill. 
 
 Burgoyne has no expectation of finding 
 anything agreeable on the further slope of 
 his mountain, and yet the time seems long 
 
 VOL. II. 22
 
 34 ALAS! 
 
 to him, till he has climbed its crest, and 
 slidden down its other side. Early and 
 splendid as is the new light that takes 
 possession of him and his shutterless bed- 
 room, he upbraids it as a laggard ; and the 
 hours that pace by till the one appointed 
 for the explanation of yesterday's mystery 
 seem to him to hobble on crutches. What 
 can Amelia have to say to him that needs 
 such a pomp of preparation ? What can 
 have turned Amelia into a Tragedy Queen ? 
 What miracle can have made her take the 
 imperative mood ? For it was the im- 
 perative mood unquestionably which, con- 
 trary to all precedent, she had made use 
 of when she had commanded him, most 
 gently it is true, since, being by her nature 
 gentle, she can do nothing ungently, to 
 leave her. He absolutely laughs at the 
 topsy-turviness of the idea. What can 
 she have to say that requires so carefully 
 selected a spot to say it in ? — a spot where 
 "it does not matter if she does break 
 down." What, in Heaven's name, can she 
 be going to say that inspires her w T ith such
 
 AMELIA 
 
 a cold-blooded intention beforehand of 
 breaking down ? 
 
 Jim's state of mind is something that of 
 the Baron's in " On ne badine pas avec 
 I' amour," on hearing that his daughter's 
 governess had been turning somersaults in 
 a field of luzerne. " Non, en verite, non, 
 mon ami, je n'y comprends absolument 
 rien. Tout cela me parait une conduite 
 desordonnee, il est vrai, mais sans motif 
 comme sans excuse." If she were any- 
 other woman, he should ascribe her be- 
 haviour to some tiresome but passing 
 tantrum, evoked by his delay in appearing ? 
 But in the past eight years how many hun- 
 dred times has he kept her waiting ? and 
 has she ever failed to meet him with the 
 same meek good-humour that has not had 
 even a tinge of reproachful forgiveness in 
 it. As she herself had said, " In all these 
 years how often have I been angry with 
 you ?" He has been angry with her times 
 out of mind, angry with her on a thousand 
 unjust and unkind counts ; angry with her 
 for her slowness, her bad complexion, her
 
 36 ALAS! 
 
 want of a sense of humour ; for a hundred 
 things that she cannot help, that she would 
 have altered — oh, how gladly — if she could ! 
 But how often has she been angry with 
 him? In vain he searches his memory, 
 hoping to overtake some instance of ill- 
 humour, or even pettishness, that may 
 make the balance between them hang a 
 little more equal. But in vain. She has 
 never been angry with him. And even 
 now neither her face nor her manner — 
 whatever else of strange and unparalleled 
 they may have conveyed — have conveyed 
 the idea of anger. 
 
 But if not anger, what then can be the 
 cause that has produced a change so 
 startling in one so little given to impulsive 
 action or eccentricities of emotion ? Can 
 she have heard anything about him ? any- 
 thing to his discredit ? He searches his 
 conscience, but whether it be that that 
 organ is not a particularly sensitive one, 
 or that it really has no damaging facts to 
 give up, it is silent, or almost so. He has 
 perhaps been rather slack in his attendance
 
 AMELIA. 37 
 
 upon her of late, but at her own bidding. 
 At his visits to the Le Marchants' no one 
 could take exception, dictated as they so 
 obviously have been by philanthropy, and 
 his conversations with Elizabeth — how few 
 and scant ! his heart heaves a rebellious 
 sigh at their paucity — might be proclaimed 
 without excision at the market cross. Our 
 thoughts are our own, and are, moreover, 
 so safely padlocked in our minds that he 
 does not think it worth while to inquire 
 whether, if his future wife could have 
 looked in and seen the restive fancies 
 capering, saddleless and bridleless, there, 
 she might have been justified in assuming 
 a crouching attitude and a sorrowfully com- 
 manding manner. 
 
 He is as far as ever from solving the 
 problem, when — for once in his life before 
 his time at the rendezvous — he presents 
 himself at the familiar door. It is opened 
 to him by Amelia herself. She has often 
 done it before, seeming to know by instinct 
 his ring from that of any other person, but 
 to-day the familiar action disconcerts him.
 
 38 ALAS! 
 
 He had expected to be received with a 
 formality and pomp of woe such as yester- 
 day had seemed to threaten ; and here is 
 Amelia looking exactly like her ordinary 
 self, except that she is perhaps rather more 
 carefully dressed than usual ; but that may 
 be due to the fact of her having, for the 
 first time, assumed the fresh calico gown, 
 which the high summer of the Italian 
 April morning seems to justify. Whether 
 it be due to the calico gown or not, there 
 is an indisputable air of gala about her, 
 and she is smiling. A revulsion of feeling 
 comes over the man, to whom her tragic 
 semi-swooning airs had given a wakeful 
 night. It was a tantrum after all, then ; a 
 storm in a teacup. And now her common 
 sense has come to the rescue, and she has 
 seen the folly of quarrelling with her bread 
 and butter. These reflections naturally do 
 not translate themselves into responsive 
 smiles on his face, but she does not seem 
 to notice his dour looks. 
 
 " I have a proposal to make to you," she 
 says, still smiling. " Father is so well this
 
 AMELIA. 39 
 
 morning, quite easy, and he has been 
 wheeled into the sitting-room to see 
 Sybilla. She has been very good about 
 him this time, and quite believes that he 
 has been really bad." 
 
 " How good of her!" comments Jim 
 grimly ; "it would be so easy and so 
 amusing to play at having a swollen toe, 
 would not it ?" 
 
 " And so," continues Miss Wilson, wisely 
 ignoring his fleer at her sister, " I am per- 
 fectly free, and I want you to take me 
 somewhere, some little drive or expedition ; 
 you see," with a conciliatory glance at her 
 own modest finery, " I counted upon your 
 saying ' yes ;' I dressed so as not to keep 
 you waiting." 
 
 Every word of this sentence confirms 
 Burgoyne in the idea implanted by her 
 first address. This is her amende, and she 
 is quite right to make it. But she would 
 have been more right still if her conduct 
 had not rendered it necessary. 
 
 Amelia is not the type of woman who 
 through life will gain much by pouts.
 
 4o ALAS! 
 
 Perhaps, by-and-by, very kindly and deli- 
 cately, he may obliquely hint this to her. 
 But all that he says aloud is the rather stiff 
 acquiescence conveyed in the words : 
 
 " By all means. I am quite at your 
 service." 
 
 "And now where -shall we go?" con- 
 tinues Amelia, shutting the door behind 
 her and beginning to cross the hotel court- 
 yard at his side ; " that is the next thing — 
 not to any gallery or church, I think, if 
 you do not mind ; I say such stupid things 
 about Art, and the more I try, the stupider 
 they are ; let us go somewhere into the 
 country — I can understand the country. I 
 am not afraid of saying stupid things about 
 it." 
 
 Into Burgoyne's mind comes the odious 
 thought that he would not put it past his 
 betrothed to say stupid things even about 
 the Tuscan landscape, but he only awaits 
 her decision in a respectful silence while 
 helping her into a fiacre. 
 
 "It would be a sin to be under any roof 
 to-day but this one," she says, looking up
 
 AMELIA. 41 
 
 to the immeasurable azure bridge above 
 her head ; would you mind — could you 
 spare time to go to Fiesole ?" 
 
 His only answer is to repeat the word 
 Fiesole to the driver, who, with the in- 
 evitable tiny poodle-shaven dog beside 
 him, is awaiting the order as to his desti- 
 nation. It is but a little way to Fiesole, 
 as we all know, but yet, as the slow hired 
 vehicle crawls up the steep ascent, with 
 the driver walking alongside, or even lag- 
 ging behind, there would be time and 
 opportunity to say a good deal. But 
 Amelia says next to nothing. Perhaps 
 the heat makes her sleepy, for it is so hot, 
 so hot between the garden walls, where the 
 rose hedges are beginning to show a pale 
 flush of plenteous pink among their multi- 
 tude of green buds. Young, indeed, just 
 born as the roses are, the highway dust 
 has already powdered them with its ash- 
 toned white. He does not know it at the 
 time, but those dust-filmed rosebuds have 
 found a home in his memory from which 
 no after -sights, however numerous, will
 
 42 ALAS/ 
 
 dislodge them. They have reached the 
 village, and left their carriage, and begun, 
 silently still, to ascend the steep lane up 
 which the feet of most of Europe and 
 America have in turn climbed to see the 
 famous view that rewards the little effort. 
 Past the cottages, whose inmates, tran- 
 quilly sitting in their doorways, or leaning 
 idly against their doorposts, have probably 
 seen all that is illustrious, notorious, history- 
 making of the day, pass pantingly. Is 
 there a prime minister, a princess, a poet, 
 a prima donna, of the time, that has not 
 toiled up the steep path to the welcome 
 rest of the bench on the high plateau, on 
 the hill-side ? Jim and Amelia are certainly 
 not likely to figure in the annals of their 
 time, but the peasants look at them with 
 as much or as little interest as if they were. 
 An immortal, unless his immortality is 
 printed on his back in letters as large 
 as those that announce Colman's mustard 
 to the world, has, to the vulgar, very much 
 the air of one of themselves. 
 
 Our friends have reached the haven of
 
 AMELIA. 43 
 
 the stone seat, and, thanks to the earliness 
 of the hour, have it all to themselves, save 
 for a trio of sunburnt women of the people, 
 with handkerchiefs tied over their tanned 
 heads, who tease them to buy straw hand- 
 screens. And when they have bought a 
 couple, and made it kindly but distinctly 
 evident that no amount of worrying will 
 induce them to buy any more, even these 
 leave them in peace and descend the hill 
 again, in search of newer victims. They 
 are alone under the sky's warm azure. 
 Beneath their eyes spreads one of those 
 nobly lovely spectacles that Italy and 
 spring, hand in hand, alone can offer. To 
 some, indeed, it may seem that the pros- 
 pect from the Bellosguardo side of the 
 valley is even more beautiful, since Fiesole, 
 sitting so high as she does, dwarfs the 
 opposite hills, and makes the looker lose 
 their wavy line. They seem flat in com- 
 parison, the plain appears wider, the be- 
 loved city more distant, and does not show 
 the same exquisite distinctness of separate 
 tower and spire and palace. But yet such
 
 44 ALAS I 
 
 comparison is mere carping. Who can 
 wish for a sight more divinely suave and 
 fair than this from the bench above Fiesole ? 
 Not a breath of smoke dares to hang about 
 the glorious old town, dimming its lustre, 
 and between them and it what a spread of 
 manifold colour, of more "mingled hue" 
 than the rainbow's " purfled scarf doth 
 show !" The moony-tinted olives, twilight 
 and ghostly, even in the dazzling radiance 
 of this superb morning hour, with the 
 blinding green of the young corn about 
 their gray feet, the cypress taper-flames, 
 the gay white houses, terrace gardened, 
 and above all, the vast smile of the Tuscan 
 heaven. 
 
 At first Amelia's muteness seems natural 
 and grateful to Jim, as the outcome of the 
 awe and hush that exceeding beauty 
 breathes on the human heart, but by- 
 and-by, as it is prolonged beyond the 
 limits that seem to him fit or agreeable, 
 it begins to get on his nerves. After 
 having so genuinely and wantonly alarmed 
 him, has she brought him here, without
 
 AMELIA. 45 
 
 any expressions of regret or remorse, 
 simply to steep herself in a silent luxury 
 of selfish enjoyment ? After brooding 
 resentfully on this idea for a considerable 
 time, "he translates it into speech. 
 
 " I thought that you had something to 
 say to me ?" 
 
 It seems as if her soul had gone out 
 into the sun and April-painted champaign 
 country, and that it is only with an effort 
 and a sigh that she fetches it home 
 again : 
 
 41 So I have." 
 
 "And how much longer am I to wait 
 
 for it r 
 
 There is no indication of any capacity 
 for patience in his tone. 
 
 She brings her look back from the 
 shining morning city, and fixes it wistfully 
 upon him. 
 
 " Are you in such a hurry to hear ?" 
 
 The pathetic streak in her voice, instead 
 of conciliating, chafes him. What is the 
 sense of this paraphernalia of preliminaries ? 
 Why not come to the point at once ? if
 
 46 ' ALAS! 
 
 indeed there is a point — a fact of which he 
 begins to entertain grave doubts. 
 
 " I do not know what you call hurry," 
 he replies drily, " I have been awaiting 
 this mystic utterance for sixteen or seven- 
 teen hours." 
 
 Her sallow cheek takes on a pinky tinge 
 of mortification at his accent. 
 
 "You are quite right," she answers 
 quickly ; "I have no business to keep you 
 waiting. I meant to tell you as soon as we 
 got here ; I asked you to bring me here 
 on purpose, only " 
 
 " You told me that you must make the 
 communication at some place where it 
 would not matter if you did break down," 
 says he, rather harshly helping her memory ; 
 " you must allow that that was not an encou- 
 raging exordium. Do you look upon this " 
 — glancing ironically round — " as a particu- 
 larly suitable place for breaking down ?" 
 
 Again that pain-evidencing wave of 
 colour flows into her face. There is 
 such an unloving mockery in his dis- 
 pleased voice.
 
 AMELIA, 47 
 
 " I shall not break down," she replies, 
 forcing herself to speak with quiet com- 
 posure ; " you need not be afraid that I 
 shall. I know that yesterday I was foolish 
 enough to say the very words you quote, 
 but I was not quite myself then ; I did not 
 quite know what I was saying ; I had only 
 just heard it." 
 
 "It? What it ? Is this a new riddle ? 
 For Heaven's sake let us hear the answer 
 to the first before we embark on any fresh 
 one ! 
 
 ''It is no riddle," replies she, her low 
 patient tones contrasting with his exaspe- 
 rated ones, " nothing could be plainer ; it 
 was only that I happened to overhear 
 something rather — rather painful — some- 
 thing that was not intended for me." 
 
 His angry cheek blanches as his thought 
 flies arrow-quick to the one subject of 
 his perennial apprehension. Someone has 
 been poisoning her ear with cowardly libels, 
 or yet more dreadful truths about Elizabeth 
 Le Marchant. For a moment or two his 
 tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth,
 
 48 ALAS! 
 
 then he says in a tone which he uselessly 
 tries to make one of calm contempt 
 alone : 
 
 "If you had lived longer in Florence, 
 you would know how much importance to 
 attach to its tittle-tattle and cancans!" 
 
 She shakes her head with a sorrowful 
 obstinacy. 
 
 " This was no tittle-tattle — no cancan." 
 
 Her answer seems but to confirm him in 
 this first horrible suspicion. 
 
 " It is astonishing," he says, in a strangled 
 voice, " how ready even the best women 
 are to believe evil ; what — what evidence 
 have you of the truth of — of these precious 
 stories ?" 
 
 " What evidence ?" she repeats, fastening 
 her sad eyes upon him — " the evidence of 
 my own heart. I realize now that I have 
 known it all along." 
 
 Read by the light of his fears, this 
 response is so enigmatic that it dawns upon 
 him with a flash of inexpressible solace 
 that perhaps he may be on the wrong 
 track after all. His ideas are precipitated
 
 AMELIA. 49 
 
 into such a state of confusion by this 
 blessed possibility that he can only echo 
 in a stupefied tone : 
 
 " Have known what all along ?" 
 
 She has turned round on the stone bench 
 upon which they have hitherto been sitting 
 side by side, and, as he in the eagerness of 
 his listening has done the same thing, they 
 are now opposite to one another, and he 
 feels as well as sees her hungry eyes de- 
 vouring his face. 
 
 " That you are sick of me," she answers, 
 in a heart-wrung whisper, " sick to death 
 of me — that was what she said." 
 
 It is impossible to deny that Burgoyne's 
 first impulse is one of relief. He has been 
 mistaken, then. Elizabeth's secret is in the 
 same state of precarious safety as her 
 enemy's departure from Florence had left 
 it in. His second impulse — our second 
 impulses are mostly our best ones, equally 
 free from the headlongness of our first, and 
 the cold worldly wisdom of our third — is 
 one of genuine indignation, concern, and 
 amazement. 
 
 vol. ii. 23
 
 50 . ALAS ! 
 
 "What who said?" 
 
 " Mrs. Byng." 
 
 His stupefaction deepens. 
 
 "Mrs. Byng — Mrs. Byng told you that 
 I was sick of you ? Sick to death of 
 you r 
 
 "Oh, no," she cries, even her emotion 
 giving way to her eagerness to correct this 
 misapprehension, " she did not tell me so ! 
 How could you imagine such a thing ? 
 She is far, far too kind-hearted ; she would 
 not hurt a fly intentionally, and would be 
 exceedingly pained if she thought I had 
 overheard her." 
 
 He shrugs his shoulders despairingly. 
 
 "Je my perds ! She told you, and she 
 did not tell you ; you heard, and you did 
 not hear." 
 
 " I am telling it very stupidly, I know," 
 she says apologetically, " very confusedly ; 
 and of course I can't expect you to under- 
 stand by instinct how it was." She sighs 
 profoundly, and then goes on quickly, and 
 no longer looking at him. " You know 
 she took me to the party, but when we
 
 AMELIA. 51 
 
 reached the villa, I found that she knew 
 so many people, and I so few that I should 
 only be a burden to her if I kept continually 
 by her side, and as I was rather tired — 
 you know that I had not been in bed for 
 two or three nights — I thought I would go 
 into the house and rest, so as to be quite 
 fresh by the time you came. I fancied it 
 was not unlikely you might be a little 
 late." 
 
 His conscience, at the unintentional re- 
 proach of this patient supposition, reminds 
 him of its existence by a sharp prick. 
 How many times has her poor vanity 
 suffered the bruise of bein^ long- first at 
 the rendezvous ? 
 
 " I discovered that chair by the window 
 under the curtain, the one where you 
 found me." 
 
 " Well ?" 
 
 " It was so quiet there, as everybody was 
 in the garden, that I suppose I fell asleep ; 
 at least I remember nothing more until 
 suddenly I heard Mrs. Byng's voice say- 
 ing "
 
 52 ALAS! 
 
 " Saying what ?" 
 
 " Her son was with her — he had brought 
 her in to have some tea ; it was to him 
 that she was speaking ; she was asking 
 him about me, where I was ? where he had 
 left me ? whether he had seen me lately ? 
 And then she said, ' Poor Amelia, Jim 
 really does neglect her shamefully ; and 
 yet one cannot help being sorry for him, 
 too ; it was such child-stealing in the first 
 instance, and he is evidently dead-sick of 
 her! It is so astonishing that she does 
 not see it ! 
 
 There is something almost terrible in 
 the calm distinctness with which Amelia 
 repeats the sentences that had laid the 
 card-house of her happiness in the dust. 
 Certainly she keeps her promise to him to 
 the letter ; she gives no lightest sign of 
 breaking down. There is not a tear in 
 her eye, not a quiver in her voice. After 
 a moment's pause, she continues : 
 
 ''And then he, Mr. Byng, answered, 
 * Poor soul, it — it is odd ! She must have 
 the hide of a hippopotamus.' '
 
 AMELIA. 53 
 
 Amelia has finished her narrative, re- 
 peating the young man's galling comment, 
 with the same composure as his mother's 
 humiliatingly compassionate ones ; and for 
 a space her sole auditor is absolutely in- 
 capable of making any criticism upon it. 
 He is forbidden, if he had wished it, to 
 offer her even the mute amends of a dumb 
 endearment, by the reappearance on the 
 scene of a couple of the sun-scorched 
 peasant torments with their straw hand- 
 screens. It is not likely that those so 
 lately bought should have worn out 
 already ; but yet they renew their impor- 
 tunities with such a determined obstinacy, 
 as if they knew this to be the case ; and it 
 is not until they are lightened of two more, 
 that they consent once again to retire, 
 leaving the warm bright plateau to the 
 lovers — if indeed they can be called such.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " True, be it said, whatever man it said, 
 That love with gall and honey doth abound ; 
 But if the one be with the other way'd, 
 For every dram of honey therein found 
 A pound of gall doth over it redound." 
 
 " She was perfectly right," says Amelia, 
 still speaking quite quietly ; "it is astonish- 
 ing that I should not have seen it ; and it 
 was child-stealing ; you were barely twenty- 
 one, and I — I was not very young for a 
 woman even then — I was twenty-three. I 
 ought to have known better." 
 
 For once in his life Burgoyne is abso- 
 lutely bereft of speech. It is always a 
 difficult matter to rebut a charge of being 
 dead-sick of a woman without conveying
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 an insult in the very denial ; and when 
 there lies a horrid substratum of truth 
 under the exaggeration of the accusation, 
 the difficulty becomes an impossibility. 
 
 " However, it might have been much 
 worse.'' continues Miss Wilson; "just 
 think if I had overheard it only after I 
 had married you. when I knew that there 
 was nothing but death that could rid you 
 of me. I thank God I have heard it in 
 time." 
 
 His throat is still too dry for him to 
 speak ; but he stretches out his arm to 
 encircle her in a mute protest at that 
 thanksgiving over her wn shipwreck; 
 but, for the first time in her life, she 
 eludes his caress. 
 
 " Chfld-stealing, 1 she repeats, under her 
 breath; "and yet" — with a touching im- 
 pulse of apology and deprecation — " you 
 seemed old for your age : you seemed so 
 much in earnest ; I think you really 
 were :" — a wistful pause — M and afterwards, 
 though of course I could not help seeing 
 that I was not to you what you «
 
 56 ALAS/ 
 
 me, yet I thought — I hoped that if I 
 waited — if I was patient — if no one else — 
 no one more worthy of you came between 
 us" — another and still wistfuller delay in 
 her halting speech — "you might grow a 
 little fond of me, out of long habit ; I never 
 expected you to be more than a little fond 
 of me I" 
 
 He has entirely hidden his face in his 
 two hands, so that she is without that 
 index to guide her as to the effect pro- 
 duced by her words, and he continues 
 completely silent. Whether, even after 
 her rude awakening, she still, deep in her 
 heart, cherishes some pale hope of a denial, 
 an explaining away of the reported utter- 
 ances, who shall say? It is with a half- 
 choked sigh that she goes on : 
 
 " But you could not ; I am not so unjust 
 as not to know that you tried your best. 
 Poor fellow ! it must have been uphill 
 work for you " — with a first touch of bitter- 
 ness — "labouring to love me, for eight 
 years ; is it any wonder that you failed ? 
 and I was so thick-skinned I did not see
 
 AMELIA, 57 
 
 it — the ' hide of a hippopotamus ' indeed ! 
 There could not be a juster comparison ; 
 and now all I can do is to beg your pardon 
 for having spoilt eight of your best years — 
 your best years" — with slow iteration ; ''but 
 come " — more lightly — " you have some 
 very good ones left too ; you are still quite 
 young ; for a man you are quite young ; 
 the harm I have done you is not irrepar- 
 able ; I think " — with an accent of reproach 
 — "you might ease my mind by telling me 
 that the harm I have done you is not irre- 
 parable !" 
 
 Thus appealed to, it is impossible for 
 him any longer to maintain his attitude of 
 disguise and concealment. His hands 
 must needs be withdrawn from before 
 his face ; and, as he turns that face to- 
 wards her, she perceives with astonish- 
 ment, almost consternation, that there is 
 an undoubted tear in each of his hard gray 
 eyes. 
 
 " And what about the harm I have done 
 to you ?" he asks under his breath, as if 
 having no confidence in his voice; "what
 
 58 ALAS! 
 
 about the eight best years of your 
 life ?" 
 
 A look of affection, so high and tender 
 and selfless, as to seem to remove her love 
 out of the category of the mortal and the 
 transitory, dawns and grows in her wan 
 face. 
 
 " Do not fret about them," she answers 
 soothingly, ''they were — they always will 
 have been — the eight best years of my 
 life. They were full of good and pleasant 
 things. Do not forget — I would not for 
 worlds have you forget — I shall never for- 
 get myself — that they all came to me 
 through you !" 
 
 At her words, most innocent as they are 
 of any intention of producing such an 
 effect, a hot flush of shame rises to his 
 very forehead, as his memory presents to 
 him the successive eras into which these 
 eight good years had divided themselves : 
 six months of headlong boyish passion ; 
 six months of cooling fever ; and seven 
 years of careless, intermittent, matter-of- 
 course, half-tenderness.
 
 AMELIA. 59 
 
 "Through me ?" he repeats, with an 
 accent of the deepest self-abasement; 
 "you do not mean to be ironical, dear; 
 you were never such a thing in your life ; 
 you could not be if you tried ; but if you 
 knew what a sweep you make me feel 
 when you say the sort of thing you have 
 just said ! — and so it is all to come to an 
 end, is it ? Good as these eight years 
 have been, you have had enough of 
 them ? You do not want any more like 
 them ?" 
 
 She says neither yes nor no. He 
 remains unanswered, unless the faint smile 
 in her weary eyes and about her drooped 
 mouth can count for a reply. 
 
 " And all because you have heard some 
 fool say that I was tired of you ?" 
 
 The tight smile spreads a little wider, 
 and invades her pale cheeks. 
 
 " Worse than tired ! sick ! sick to 
 death /" 
 
 She is looking straight before her, at 
 the landscape simmering in the climbing 
 sun, the divine landscape new and young
 
 6o ALAS/ 
 
 as it was before duomo and bell-tower 
 sprang and towered heavenwards. Why 
 should her gaze dwell any more upon him ? 
 She has renounced him, her eyes must 
 fain renounce him too. As he hears her 
 words, as he watches her patient profile, 
 the sole suffering thing in the universal 
 morning joy, a great revulsion of feeling, 
 a great compassion mixed with as large a 
 remorse pours in torrent over his heart. 
 These emotions are so strong that they 
 make him deceive even himself as to their 
 nature. It seems to him as if scales had 
 suddenly fallen from his eyes, showing him 
 how profoundly he prizes the now depart- 
 ing good, telling him that life can neither 
 ask nor give anything better than the 
 undemanding, selfless, boundless love about 
 to withdraw its shelter from him. His 
 arm steals round her waist, and not once 
 does it flash across his mind — as, to his 
 shame be it spoken, it has often flashed 
 before — what a long way it has to 
 steal ! 
 
 "Am I sick of you, Amelia?"
 
 AMELIA. 6 1 
 
 She makes no effort to release herself. 
 It does him no harm that she should once 
 more rest within his clasp. But she still 
 looks straight before her at lucent Firenze 
 and her olives, and says three times, accom- 
 panying each repetition of the word with a 
 sorrowful little head-shake : 
 
 " Yes ! yes ! yes !" 
 
 He will compel her to look at him, his 
 own Amelia. Have not all her tender 
 looks been his for eight long years ? He 
 puts out his disengaged hand, and with it 
 determinately turns her poor quivering face 
 round so as to meet his gaze. 
 
 "Am I sick of you, Amelia?" 
 
 In the emotion of the moment, it appears 
 to him as if there were something almost 
 ludicrously improbable and lying about 
 that accusation, in which, when first 
 brought against him, his guilty soul had 
 admitted more than a grain of truth. Her 
 faded eyes turn to his, like flowers to their 
 sun ; the veracity of his voice and of his 
 eager gray orbs — still softened from their 
 habitual severity by the tears that had so
 
 62 ALAS/ 
 
 lately wet them — making such a hope, as, 
 five minutes ago, she had thought never 
 again to cherish, leap into splendid life in 
 her sick heart. 
 
 " Is it possible ?" she murmurs, almost 
 inaudibly, " do you mean — that you are 
 
 not r 
 
 # * * * 
 
 They go down the hill, past the cottages, 
 and the incurious peasants, hand in hand, 
 her soul running over with a deep joy ; 
 and his occupied by an unfamiliar calm, 
 that is yet backed by an ache of remorse, 
 and by — what else ? That " else " he him- 
 self neither could nor would define. He 
 spends the whole of that day with Amelia, 
 both lunching and dining with her and her 
 family ; a course which calls forth expres- 
 sions of unaffected surprise, not at all tinc- 
 tured with malice — unless it be in the case 
 of Sybilla, who has never been partial to 
 him — from each of them. 
 
 " We have been. .thinking that Jim was 
 going to jilt you, Amelia !" Cecilia has 
 said with graceful badinage ; nor, strange
 
 AMELIA. 63 
 
 to say, has she been at all offended when 
 Jim has retorted, with equal grace and 
 much superior ill-nature, that on such a 
 subject no one could speak with more 
 authority than she. 
 
 The large white stars are making the 
 nightly sky almost as gorgeous as the day's 
 departed majesty had done, ere Jim finds 
 himself back at his hotel. His intention 
 of quietly retreating to his own room is 
 traversed by Byng, who, having evidently 
 been on the watch for him, springs up 
 the stairs, three steps at a time, after 
 him. 
 
 " Where have you been all day?" he 
 inquires impatiently. 
 
 " At the Anglo-Americain. I wonder 
 you are not tired of always asking the 
 same question and receiving the same 
 answer to it." 
 
 "I am not so sure that I should always 
 receive the same answer," replies the other, 
 with a forced laugh — f £ but stop a bit !" — 
 seeing a decided quickening of speed in 
 his friend's upward movements — " my
 
 64 ALAS! 
 
 mother is asking for you ; she has been 
 asking for you all the afternoon ; she wants 
 to speak to you before she goes." 
 
 "Goes? 1 
 
 " Yes. she is off at seven o'clock to- 
 morrow morning — back to England : she 
 had a telegram to-day to say that her old 
 aunt, the one who brought her up, has 
 had a second stroke. " No !" — seeing Jim 
 begin to arrange his features in that deco- 
 rous shape of grave sympathy which we 
 naturally assume on such occasions — " it is 
 no case of great grief ; the poor old woman 
 has been quite silly ever since her last 
 attack ; but mother thinks that she ought 
 to be there, at — at the end ; to look after 
 things, and so forth." 
 
 There is an alertness, a something that 
 expresses the reverse of regret in the tone 
 employed by Mrs. Byng's son in this de- 
 tailed account of the causes of her imminent 
 departure, which, even if his thoughts had 
 not already sprung in that direction, would 
 have set Burgoyne thinking as to the 
 mode in which the young man before him
 
 AMELIA. 65 
 
 is likely to employ the liberty that his 
 parent's absence will restore to him. 
 
 " I offered to go with her," says Byng, 
 perhaps discerning a portion at least of his 
 companion's disapprobation. 
 
 " And she refused ?" 
 
 Byng looks down, and begins to kick 
 the banisters — they are still on the stairs — 
 idly with one foot. 
 
 " Mother is so unselfish that it is 
 always difficult to make out what she 
 really wishes ; but — but I do not quite 
 see of what use I should be to her if I 
 did go." 
 
 There is a moment's pause ; then Bur- 
 goyne speaks, in a dry, hortatory elder 
 brother's voice : 
 
 " If you take my advice you will go 
 home." 
 
 The disinterested counsel of wise elder 
 brothers is not always taken in the spirit it 
 merits ; and there is no trace of docile 
 and unquestioning acquiescence in Byng's 
 monosyllabic — 
 "Why?" 
 
 VOL. II. 24
 
 66 ALAS J 
 
 " Because, if you stay here, I think you 
 will most likely get into mischief." 
 
 The young man's usually good-humoured 
 eyes give out a blue spark that looks rather 
 like fight. 
 
 " The same kind of mischief that you 
 have been getting into during the past 
 week ?" he inquires slowly. 
 
 The acquaintance with his movements 
 evidenced by this last sentence, no less 
 than the light they throw upon his own 
 motives, stagger Jim, to the extent of 
 making him accept the sneer in total 
 silence. Is not it a richly deserved one ? 
 But the sweet-natured Byng is already 
 repenting it ; and there is something con- 
 ciliatory and almost entreating in the spirit 
 of his last remark : 
 
 " I do not know what has happened to 
 my mother," he says, lowering his voice ; 
 " there is no one less of a mauvaise langue 
 than she, as you know ; but in the case 
 of " — he breaks off and begins his sen- 
 tence afresh; "she has been warning me 
 against them again ; I can't find that she
 
 AMELIA. 67 
 
 has any reason to go upon ; but she has 
 taken a violent prejudice against her. She 
 says that it is one of her instincts ; and 
 you — you have done nothing towards set- 
 ting her right V 
 
 Perhaps it may be that his young friend's 
 reported metaphor of the "hippopotamus 
 hide " has not served to render him any 
 dearer to Jim ; but there is certainly no 
 great suavity in his reply : 
 
 " Why should I ? — it is no concern of 
 mine." 
 
 " No concern of yours to stand by and 
 see an angel's white robe besmirched by 
 the foul mire of slander ?" cries Byng in- 
 dignantly, and lapsing into that high-flown 
 mood which never fails to make his more 
 w T ork-a-day companion " see blood." 
 
 " When I come across such a disagree- 
 able sight it will be time enough to decide 
 whether I will interfere or not. At present 
 I have not met with anvthin^ of the kind," 
 returns he, resolutely putting an end to 
 the dialogue by knocking at Mrs. Byng's 
 portal, within which he is at once admitted. 
 
 2_1 2
 
 68 ALAS! 
 
 The door of the bedroom communicating 
 with the salon is open, and through it he 
 sees the lady he has come to visit standing 
 surrounded by gaping dress-baskets, strewn 
 raiment, and scattered papers ; all the un- 
 comfortable litter that speaks of an imminent 
 departure. She joins him at once, and, 
 shutting the door behind her, sits down 
 with a fagged air. 
 
 " I hear," he begins — " Willy tells me — 
 I am very sorry to hear — — " 
 
 " Oh, there is no great cause for sorrow," 
 rejoins she quickly, as if anxious to dis- 
 claim a grief which might be supposed to 
 check or limit her conversation — "poor 
 dear old auntie ! — the people who love her 
 best could not wish to keep her in the 
 state she has been in for the last year ; oh, 
 dear!" — sighing — "how very dismal the 
 dregs of life are ! do not you hope, Jim, 
 that we shall die before we come to be 
 ' happy releases ' ?" 
 
 "I do indeed," replies he gravely ; "I 
 expect to be sick — dead-sick of life long 
 before I reach that stage of it."
 
 AMELIA. 69 
 
 He looks at her resentfully as she speaks, 
 but she has so entirely forgotten her own 
 application of the accented adjectives to 
 his feelings for Amelia, that she replies 
 only by a rather puzzled but perfectly 
 innocent glance. 
 
 " I never was so unwilling to leave any 
 place in my life," she goes on presently, 
 pursuing her own train of thought ; " I do 
 not know how to describe it — a sort of 
 presentiment." 
 
 He smiles. 
 
 " And yet I do not think that there are 
 any owls in the Piazza to hoot under your 
 windows !" 
 
 "Perhaps not," rejoins she, with some 
 warmth; " but what is still more unlucky 
 than that happened to me last night ; they, 
 passed the wine the wrong way round the 
 table at the Mac Ivors. I was on thorns !" 
 
 " And you think that the wine going the 
 wrong way round the table gave your aunt 
 a stroke?" inquires Jim, with an irritating 
 air of asking for information. 
 
 Mrs. Byng reddens slightly.
 
 7o ALAS! 
 
 " I think nothing of the kind ; I draw 
 no inference ; I only state a fact ; it is a 
 very unlucky thing to send the wine round 
 the wrong way : if you had not spent your 
 life among grizzly bears and cannibals you 
 would have known it too !" 
 
 " There are no cannibals in the Rocky 
 Mountains," corrects Jim quietly ; and then 
 they both laugh, and recommence their talk 
 on a more friendly footing. 
 
 "lam not at all happy about Willy." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 " It is not his health so much — his colour 
 is good, and his appetite not bad." 
 
 " Except the Fat Boy in ' Pickwick,' I 
 never heard of anyone who had a better." 
 
 "But he is not himself; there is some- 
 thing odd about him !" 
 
 "Indeed!" 
 
 " Have not you noticed it yourself? — do 
 not you think that there is something odd 
 about him ? Does not he strike you as 
 odd ?" 
 
 "Odd?" repeats Burgoyne slowly, re- 
 flecting in how extremely commonplace a
 
 AMELIA. 71 
 
 light both the virtues and vices of his 
 fellow - traveller have always presented 
 themselves to him ; "it would never 
 have occurred to me that Willy was odd ; 
 I cannot" — smiling — "encourage you in 
 the idea that you have added one to the 
 number of the world's eccentrics." 
 
 She sighs rather impatiently at his 
 apparently intentional misunderstanding of 
 her drift. 
 
 " ' Children are avenues to misfortune,' 
 as somebody said, and I think that, who- 
 ever he was, he was right. ' If Jacob take 
 a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as 
 are those in the land, what good shall my 
 life do to me ?' " 
 
 "Why should you credit Jacob with any 
 such intention ?" 
 
 " I do not half like leaving him here by 
 himself." 
 
 "By himself? You count me as no 
 one then ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, I do — I count you as a great 
 deal ; that is why I was so anxious to speak 
 to you before I went ; of course I do not
 
 72 ALAS! 
 
 expect you to take upon yourself the whole 
 responsibility of him, but you might keep 
 an eye upon him." 
 
 He shrugs his shoulders. 
 
 "As I have to keep the other eye upon 
 myself, I am afraid that the effort would 
 but make me squint." 
 
 "It is his own generosity that I am 
 afraid of — his self-sacrificing impulses ; I 
 am always in terror of his marrying some- 
 one out of pure good-nature, just to oblige 
 her, just because she looked as if she 
 wished it." 
 
 " Stephenson thinks that it does not 
 much matter whom we marry, whether 
 ' noisy scullions,' or ' acidulous vestals.' ' 
 
 " I do not care what Stephenson thinks : 
 ever since Willy was in Eton jackets, I 
 have had a nightmare of his bringing me 
 home as daughter-in-law some poor little 
 governess with her nose through her veil, 
 and her fingers through her gloves !" 
 
 Burgoyne smiles involuntarily as a vision 
 of Elizabeth's daintily-clad hands flashes 
 before his mental eye.
 
 AMELIA. 73 
 
 " I think you overrate his magnanimity ; 
 I never saw him at all tender to anyone 
 whose gloves were not beyond suspicion." 
 
 Mrs. Byng laughs constrainedly. 
 
 " Well, if she has not holes in her 
 gloves, she may have holes in her reputa- 
 tion, which is worse." 
 
 Jim draws in his breath hard. The tug 
 of war is coming, as the preceding lead- 
 ing remark, lugged in by the head and 
 shoulders, sufficiently evidences. At all 
 events he will do nothing to make its 
 approach easier or quicker. He awaits 
 it in silence. 
 
 " These Le Marchants — as they are 
 friends of yours — I suppose that I ought 
 not to say anything against them ?" 
 
 " I am sure that you are too well-bred 
 to do anything of the kind," replies he 
 precipitately, with a determined effort to 
 stop her mouth with a compliment, which 
 she is equally determined not to deserve. 
 
 "I do not think I am ; I am only well- 
 bred now and then, when it suits me ; I 
 am not going to be well-bred to-night."
 
 74 ALAS! 
 
 " I am sorry to hear it." 
 
 ''Whether they are friends of yours or 
 not, I do not like them." 
 
 " I do not think that that matters much, 
 either to you or to them." 
 
 " I have an instinct that they are adven- 
 turesses." 
 
 " I know for a certainty " — with growing 
 warmth — "that they are nothing of the 
 kind." 
 
 " Then why do not they go out any- 
 where ?" 
 
 " Because they do not choose." 
 
 " Because no one asks them, more 
 likely! Why were they so determined 
 not to be introduced to me ?" 
 
 "How can I tell? Perhaps" — with a 
 wrathful laugh — " they did not like your 
 looks !" 
 
 She echoes his false mirth with no 
 inferior exasperation. 
 
 "Who is ill-bred now ?" 
 
 Her tone calls him back to a sense of 
 the ungentlemanlikeness and puerility of his 
 conduct.
 
 AMELIA. 75 
 
 " I !" — he replies contritely — " un- 
 doubtedly I ! but " 
 
 " Do not apologize," interrupts she, 
 recovering her equanimity with that ease 
 which she has transmitted to her son ; " I 
 like you for standing up for them if they 
 are your friends ; and I hope that you will 
 do the same good office for me when some- 
 one sticks pins into me behind my back ; 
 but come now, let us be rational ; surely 
 we may talk quietly about them without 
 insulting each other, may not we ?" 
 
 " I do not know ; we can try." 
 
 " I suppose " — a little ironically — " that 
 you are not so sensitive about them but 
 that you can bear me to ask a few perfectly 
 harmless questions ?" 
 
 He writhes. " Of course ! of course ! 
 what are they to me ? — they are nothing 
 to me !" 
 
 A look of incredulity, which she perhaps 
 does not take any very great pains to con- 
 ceal, spreads over her face. 
 
 " Then you really will be doing me a 
 great service if you tell me just exactly
 
 76 ALAS/ 
 
 all you know about them, good and 
 bad." 
 
 4 'All I know about them," replies Jim in 
 a rapid parrot-voice, as if he were rattling 
 over some disagreeable lesson — " is that 
 they were extremely kind to me ten years 
 ago ; that they had a beautiful place in 
 Devonshire, and were universally loved 
 and respected : I hear that they have let 
 their place ; so no doubt they are not so 
 much loved and respected as they were ; 
 and now you know as much about the 
 matter as I do !"
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 "Welcome ever smiles; and Farewell goes out 
 sighing." 
 
 This last clause is not always true. For 
 example, there is very little sighing in the 
 farewells made to Mrs. Byng by the two 
 young men who see her off at the Flo- 
 rence Railway Station. And Mrs. Byng 
 herself has been too much occupied in 
 manoeuvring to get a few last private 
 words with each of her escort to have 
 much time for sighing either. 
 
 She would have been wounded if her 
 old friend Jim had not come to see the last 
 of her, and she would have been broken- 
 hearted if her son had not paid her this
 
 73 ALAS! 
 
 final attention ; and yet each necessarily 
 destroys the tete-a-tete she is burning to 
 have with the other. It is indelicate to 
 implore your adored child not to go to the 
 devil in the presence of an intimate friend, 
 and it would give a not unnatural umbrage 
 to that child if you urged the guardian 
 friend to check his downward tendency 
 while he himself is standing by. Nor do 
 her two companions at all aid her in her 
 strategy ; rather, they show a tendency to 
 unite in baffling her, hanging together 
 round her like a bodyguard, and effectually 
 hindering the last words which she is 
 pining to administer. Only once for a 
 very few minutes does she succeed in out- 
 witting them, when she despatches Willy 
 to the bookstall to buy papers for her — an 
 errand from which he returns with an ex- 
 asperating celerity. The instant that his 
 back is turned, Mrs. Byng addresses her 
 companion in an eager voice of hurry and 
 prayer : 
 
 " You will keep an eye upon him ?" 
 
 Silence.
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 79 
 
 " You will keep an eye upon him — 
 promise ?" 
 
 " I do not know what ' keeping an eye 
 upon him ' means in your vocabulary ; 
 often you and I do not use the same 
 dictionary ; until I know, I will not 
 promise." 
 
 " You will look after him ; do, Jim !" 
 
 " My dear madam " — with irritation — 
 "let me go and buy your papers; and 
 meanwhile urge him to look after me; 
 I assure you that it is quite as neces- 
 sary." 
 
 " Fiddlesticks, with your unimaginative, 
 unemotional nature " 
 
 "H'm!" 
 
 " Your head will always take care of 
 your heart." 
 
 " Will it?" 
 
 " While he — promise me at least that, if 
 you see him rushing to his ruin, you will 
 telegraph to me ?" 
 
 " Certainly, if you wish it ; I will tele- 
 graph, ' Willy rushing Ruin.' At five-and- 
 twenty centimes a word, it will cost you
 
 
 - i: 
 
 
 zZ 1 _ = 
 
 
 
 Z~—Z Z_ 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 ; 

 
 

 
 82 ALAS! 
 
 " I have been seeing Mrs. Byng off," he 
 replies, with that slight shade of awkward- 
 ness in his tone which has accompanied his 
 every mention of the mother or son since 
 his explanation with his betrothed. 
 
 " You let her go without getting that 
 wedding present out of her, after all ?" 
 cries Cecilia, who is in a rather tryingly 
 playful mood. 
 
 " Gone, is she ?" says Sybilla, with a 
 somewhat ostentatious sigh of resentful 
 relief; "well, I, for one, shall not cry. I 
 am afraid that she was not very simpatica 
 to me ; she was so dreadfully robust. 
 Perhaps, now that she is no longer here to 
 monopolise him, we shall be allowed to see 
 something more of that nice boy." 
 
 No one answers. Not one of her three 
 listeners is at the moment disposed to chant 
 or even echo praises of the " nice boy." 
 Sybilla perversely pursues the subject. 
 
 " I dare say that he has a delicacy about 
 coming without a special invitation," she 
 says, " where there is an invalid ; but you 
 might tell him that on my good days no
 
 AMELIA. 8s 
 
 one is more pleased to see their friends 
 than I ; it does not even send my tem- 
 perature up ; you might tell him that on 
 my good days Dr. Coldstream says it does 
 not even send my temperature up !" 
 
 Again no one answers. 
 
 " You do not seem to be listening to 
 what I am saying," cries Sybilla frac- 
 tiously ; ''will you please tell him, Jim ?" 
 
 Jim lifts his heavy eyes from the ugly 
 carpet on which they have been resting, 
 and looks distastefully back at her. 
 
 " I do not think that I will, Sybilla," he 
 replies slowly ; " I do not think he cares a 
 straw whether your temperature goes up 
 or down. I think that he does not come 
 here because — because he has found metal 
 more attractive elsewhere." 
 
 He makes this statement for no other 
 reason than because it is so intensely un- 
 pleasant to him, because he realizes that he 
 must have to face the fact it embodies, and 
 to present it not only to himself, but to 
 others. And each day that passes proves to 
 him more and more conclusively that it is a 
 
 25— 2
 
 S 4 ALAS.' 
 
 fact. He asks Byng no question as to the 
 disposition of his day. He sees but little 
 of him, having, indeed, changed the hours 
 of his own breakfast and dinner in order to 
 avoid having his appetite spoilt by the 
 sight of so much unnecessary radiance 
 opposite him ; but he knocks up against 
 him, flower-laden, at the Strozzi steps ; 
 he notes the splendour of his ties and 
 waistcoats ; he grows to know the Elizabeth- 
 look on his face, when he comes singing 
 home at evening, as one knows the look of 
 the western clouds that the sun's red lips 
 have only just ceased to kiss, though no 
 sun is any longer in sight ; and yet he does 
 not interfere. He has received from the 
 young man's mother a hasty letter, pen- 
 cilled in the train, not an hour after she 
 had quitted him ; another more leisurely, 
 yet as anxious, from Turin ; a third from 
 Paris, and lastly a telegram from Charing 
 Cross. All bear the same purport. 
 
 " Write ; keep an eye upon him !" 
 " Write ; keep an eye upon him ! Write!" 
 
 And yet. though a full week had passed.
 
 
 though he sees the son of his old ally 
 drifting, faster than ever autumn leaf 
 drifted on a flush October river, to the 
 whirlpool she had dreaded for him, yet he 
 sends her never a word. He writes her 
 long letters, it is true, covers telegram- 
 forms with pregnant messages, but ir 
 all find their ultimate home in the wood 
 fire. When the moment comes, he finds 
 it impossible to send them, since, upon 
 searching his heart for the motives that 
 have dictated them, he finds those mot: 
 to be no fidelity* to an ancient friendship, 
 no care for the boy's welfare, but, simply 
 and nakedly, the satisfaction of his own 
 spite, the easing of his own bitter 
 jealousy. 
 
 So the Florentine post goes out daily, 
 bearing no tale of Byng's backslidings to 
 his native land, and Jim. brushing past 
 hirr. erm g mm curtly, never going 
 
 nearer to the Piazza d' Aze^lio than the 
 Innocenti — a s^ood loner stree: off — dev 
 himself to the frantic prosecution of a suit 
 long since won. to the conquest of a heart
 
 86 ALAS/ 
 
 for eight weary years hopelessly, irrecover- 
 ably, pitiably his. His presence at the 
 Anglo-Americain is so incessant, and his 
 monopolizing of Amelia so unreasonable, 
 that Sybilla — for the first time in her life 
 really a little neglected — alternately runs up 
 her pulse to 1 70 and drops it to 40. 
 
 " And then you wonder that I am anxious 
 to be married," says Cecilia, accompanying 
 her future brother-in-law to the door, on 
 the day on which the latter phenomenon 
 has occurred, and wiping the angry tears 
 from her plump cheeks. " I make no 
 secret of it, I am madly anxious, I would 
 marry anyone, I am desperate. Just think 
 what my life will be when Amelia is gone ; 
 and though of course I shall be a great 
 deal with her — she has promised that I 
 shall be almost always with her" (Jim 
 winces) — " yet of course it can't be the 
 same thing as having a home of your 
 own." 
 
 " We will do our best for you," replies 
 he, with a rather rueful smile and a sense 
 of degradation ; " but you know, my dear
 
 AMELIA. 87 
 
 Cis, anybody can lead a horse to the 
 water, but it is not so easy to make him 
 drink." 
 
 " That is quite true," replies Cecilia, 
 one of whose most salient merits is an 
 extreme unreadiness to be affronted, wip- 
 ing her eyes as she speaks, "and I have 
 no luck ; such promising things turn up, 
 and then come to nothing. Now, that 
 clergyman the other day, whom we met 
 at the Villa Careggi — such a pleasant 
 gentlemanlike man — he was on the look- 
 out for a wife, he told me so himself, and 
 I know so much about the working of a 
 parish, and next day he was off, Heaven 
 knows where !" 
 
 Jim gives a slight shudder. 
 
 " I do not think you had any great loss 
 in him," he says hastily ; then, seeing her 
 surprised air, " I mean, you know, that 
 it is always said that a man is a better 
 judge of another man than a woman is, 
 and I did not like his looks ; give us 
 time, and we will do better for you than 
 that."
 
 88 ALAS! 
 
 Cecilia can no longer accuse her future 
 relation of any slackness in the matter of 
 expeditions. There is something of fever 
 in the way in which he arrives each morn- 
 ing, armed with some new plan for the 
 day, giving no one any peace until his 
 project is carried out. It seems as if he 
 must crowd into the last fortnight of 
 Amelia's stay in Florence all the sight- 
 seeing, all the junkets, all the enjoyment 
 which ought to have been temperately 
 spread over the eight years of their 
 engagement. 
 
 One day — all nearer excursions being 
 exhausted — they drive to Monte Senario, 
 that sweet and silent spot, happily too far 
 from Florence for the swarm of tourists to 
 invade, where earth-weary men have set 
 up a rest scarcely less dumb than the grave 
 in a lonely monastery of the Order of La 
 Trappe. Through the Porta San Gallo, 
 along the Bologna Road they go. It is a 
 soft, summer morning, with not much sun. 
 Up, past the villas and gardens, where 
 the Banksia roses and wistarias are rioting
 
 AMELIA. 89 
 
 over wall, and berceau and pergola, climb- 
 ing even the tall trees. Round the very- 
 head of one young poplar two rose-trees — 
 a yellow and a white one — are flinging 
 their arms ; flowered so lavishly that 
 hardly a pin's point could be put between 
 the blossoms. Up and up, a white wall 
 on either hand. The dust lies a foot thick 
 on the road ; thick too on the monthly 
 roses, just breaking into full pink flush ; 
 thick on themselves as the endless mule- 
 carts come jingling down the hill with 
 bells and red tassels, and a general air 
 of what would be jollity were not that 
 feeling so given the lie to by the poor 
 jaded, suffering beasts. Up and up, till 
 they leave stone walls and villas and olive- 
 yards behind them, and are away among 
 the mountains. At a very humble little 
 house that has no air of an inn they leave 
 the carriage, and climb up a rocky road, 
 and through a perfumed pine-wood, to 
 where the Trappist Monastery stands, in 
 its perfect silence and isolation, on its hill- 
 top, looking over its fir - woods at the
 
 90 ALAS/ 
 
 ranges of the Apennines, lying one behind 
 the other in the stillness of the summer- 
 day ; looking to distant Florence, misty 
 and indistinct in her Arno plain ; look- 
 ing to Fiesole, dwarfed to a molehill's 
 dimensions. 
 
 " I am told that one of the brothers is 
 an Englishman ; I did not hear his name, 
 but he is certainly English," says Cecilia, 
 as they mount the shallow, grass-grown 
 steps to the monastery door. " If I send 
 up word that I am a fellow-countrywoman, 
 perhaps he will come out and speak to me ; 
 I am sure that it would be a very nice 
 change for him, poor fellow !" 
 
 And it is the measure of the amount of 
 Cecilia's acquaintance with the rules of the 
 Order, that it is only half in jest that she 
 makes the suggestion. But she does not 
 repeat it to the lay-brother who stands, 
 civil yet prohibitory, at the top of the 
 flight, and who, in answer to Burgoyne's 
 halting questions as to where they may go, 
 politely answers that they may go any- 
 where — anywhere, bien cntendu, outside.
 
 So they wander aimlessly aw^ 7 
 
 push open a rickety gate, and passing an 
 old dog. barking angry remonstrances 
 them from the retirement of a barrel, step 
 along a grassy path that leads they know 
 not whither. Two more young lay-brothers 
 meet them, with their hands full of leopar 
 bane fk m hich they have been gather- 
 
 ing, probably to deck their altar with. 
 
 icfia his passed her hand through 
 Jim's arm — since his late increased kind- 
 
 - 
 litde freedoms with him than she had 
 
 hitherto permitted herself — and though 
 
 she .refill not to lean heavily or 
 
 troublesomely upon hin die slight 
 
 contact of her fingers keeps him reminded 
 
 tha: Perhaps it is as weH 
 
 since to-day he s of such a 
 
 strange tende: forg : 
 
 :. present, and to come. Has one of 
 
 the monks* numb hands been laid upon 
 
 his heart to lull it into so frozen a qui 
 
 lb-day he feels as if it were absolu: 
 
 impossible to him to experie :^er
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 pleasure or pain ; as if to hold Elizabeth 
 in his own arms, or see her in Byng's, 
 would be to him equally indifferent. His 
 apathy in this latter respect is to be put to 
 the test sooner than he expects. Not 
 indeed that Elizabeth is lying in Byng's 
 arms — it would be a gross misrepresenta- 
 tion to say so, she being, on the contrary, 
 most decorously poised on a camp-stool — 
 least romantic of human resting-places — 
 when they come suddenly upon her and 
 him in the course of their prowl round the 
 inhospitable walls. She is sitting on her 
 camp-stool, and he is lying on his face in 
 the grass, just not touching her slim feet. 
 
 The advancing party perceive the couple 
 advanced upon before the latter are aware 
 of their nearness ; long enough for the 
 former to realize how very much de trop 
 they will be, yet not long enough to enable 
 them to escape unnoticed. Jim becomes 
 aware of the very second at which Amelia 
 recognises the unconscious pair, by an in- 
 voluntary pinch of her fingers upon his 
 arm, which a moment later she hastily
 
 AMELIA. 93 
 
 drops. His own first feeling on catching 
 sight of them — no, not his very first — his 
 very first is as if someone had run a 
 darning-needle into his heart — but almost 
 his first is to shout out to them in loud 
 warning : 
 
 "Be on your guard ! we are close to 
 you ! 
 
 He will never forgive either himself or 
 them if they ignorantly indulge in any 
 endearment under his very eyes. But 
 they do not. There are no interlacing 
 arms to disentwine, nothing to make them 
 spring apart, when at length they look up 
 and take in the fact — an unwelcome fact it 
 must needs be — of their invasion. 
 
 On hearing approaching footsteps, Byng 
 rolls over on his back in the grass ; on 
 perceiving that most of the footsteps are 
 those of ladies, he springs to his feet. 
 Elizabeth remains sitting on her camp- 
 stool. 
 
 " What a coincidence !" cries Cecilia, 
 breaking into a laugh. 
 
 They are all grateful to her for the
 
 94 ALAS! 
 
 remark, though it is rather a silly one, as 
 there is no particular coincidence in the 
 case. Burgoyne is irritatedly conscious 
 that Amelia is covertly observing him, 
 and before he can check himself he has 
 thrown over his shoulder at her one of 
 those snubbing glances from which, for 
 the last ten days, he has painstakenly and 
 remorsefully refrained. It is not a happy 
 moment to look at poor Amelia, as she has 
 not yet cooled down from the heat of her 
 climb through the fir-wood — a heat that 
 translates itself into patchy flushes all over 
 her face, not sparing even her forehead. 
 Elizabeth is flushed too. She has not met 
 Miss Wilson since she had declined Bur- 
 goyne's offer of bringing his betrothed to 
 see her, and in her deprecating eyes there 
 is a guilty and tremulous recollection of 
 this fact. But below the guilt and the 
 deprecation and the tremor, what else is 
 there in Elizabeth's eyes ? What of 
 splendid and startling, and that comes 
 but once in a lifetime ? Rather than be 
 obliged to give a name to that vague
 
 AMELIA. 95 
 
 radiance, Jim turns his look back upon 
 his own too glowing dear one. 
 
 "Did you come here all alone? You 
 two all alone ? What fun !" asks Cecilia, 
 with an air of delighted curiosity. 
 
 Again her companions inwardly thank 
 her. It is the question that both — though 
 with different degrees of eagerness — have 
 been thirsting to ask. 
 
 "Alone? — oh no!" replies Elizabeth, 
 with that uneasy, frightened look that 
 Burgoyne has always noticed on her face 
 when she has been brought into unwilling 
 relation with strangers. " My mother is 
 here — she came with us ; why. where is 
 she ?" — looking round with a startled air — 
 4 'she was here a moment ago." 
 
 A grim smile curves Jim's mouth. It is 
 evident that the unhappy Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant, worn out with her role of duenna, 
 has slipped away without being missed by 
 either of her companions. Would they 
 have even discovered her absence but for 
 Cecilia's query ? 
 
 " Mrs. Le Marchant was here a moment
 
 96 ALAS.' 
 
 ago," echoes Byng, addressing the com- 
 pany generally; "but" — dodging his 
 friend's eyes — "she said she was a little 
 stiff from sitting so long ; she must be 
 quite close by." 
 
 " I will go and look for her," says 
 Elizabeth, confused, and rising from her 
 rickety seat as she speaks ; but Amelia, 
 who is nearest to her, puts out a friendly 
 hand in prohibition. 
 
 " Oh, do not stir !" she cries, smiling 
 kindly and admiringly. " You look so 
 comfortable. Let me go and search for 
 Mrs. Le Marchant ; I — I — should be 
 afraid to sit down, I am so hot. I should 
 like to find her ; Cecilia will help me, and 
 Mr. Byng will show us the way." 
 
 It is not always that generous actions 
 meet their meed of gratitude from those 
 for whose sake they are performed ; and, 
 though Burgoyne recognises the mag- 
 nanimity of his fancies line of conduct, 
 thankfulness to her for it is not the 
 feeling uppermost in his mind when, a 
 few moments later, he finds himself stand-
 
 AMELIA. 97 
 
 ing in uneasy tetc-a-tete over the seated 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 "Will not you sit down?" she asks 
 presently, adding, with a low, timid laugh, 
 " I do not know why I should invite you, 
 as if" — glancing round at the sun-steeped 
 panorama — " this were my drawing-room." 
 
 He complies, taking care to occupy a 
 quite different six feet of herbage from 
 that which still bears the imprint of Byng's 
 lengthy limbs. The grass grows cool and 
 fresh, full of buttercups and tall blue bugle ; 
 out of them the gray monastery wall rises, 
 in its utter lifeless silence, with its small 
 barred windows. Was ever any building, 
 within which is human life, so unutterably 
 still ? As he leans his elbow among the 
 king-cups, Jim says to himself that the 
 lovers had chosen their place well and 
 wisely — that the consciousness of the 
 austere, denied lives going on so close 
 behind them, in their entire joylessness, 
 must have given an added point, a keener 
 edge to the poignancy of their own enjoy- 
 ment of the sweet summer day outside. 
 
 VOL. II, 26
 
 98 ALAS! 
 
 " You have not been to see us for a 
 long time," says Elizabeth presently, in a 
 small and diffident voice, after having 
 waited until the probability of his speak- 
 ing first has become a mere possibility, 
 and even that a faint one. 
 
 He replies baldly, " No." 
 
 His look is fixed on a knoll, whence the 
 monks must have gathered their leopard's 
 bane. They cannot have gathered much, 
 so bounteously do the gay yellow flowers 
 still wave on the hillock. Nearer stands a 
 colony of purple orchises, and from them 
 the eye travels away to the silent fir-wood, 
 to the range of misty hills and the distant 
 plain, touched now and again by a vague 
 hint of sunshine, that makes one for the 
 moment feel sure that one has detected 
 Duomo or Campanile. How many hill 
 ranges there are ! One can count six or 
 seven, like the ridges in a gigantic 
 ploughed field, one behind another — all 
 solemnly beautiful on this windless day of 
 grave and ungaudy sweetness. Has the 
 young man been reckoning the ranks of
 
 AMELIA. 99 
 
 the Apennines, that it is so long before he 
 adds a low-voiced, mocking question to his 
 monosyllable ? 
 
 " Have you missed me very much ?" 
 
 The woman addressed seems in no hurry 
 to answer. She has drawn her narrow 
 brown brows together, as if in the effort to 
 hit truth in her nicest shade in her answer. 
 Then she speaks with a sort of soft self- 
 remonstrance : 
 
 " Oh, surely ! I must have missed you — 
 you were so extraordinarily, so unaccount- 
 ably kind to us !" 
 
 There is not one of us who would not 
 rather be loved for what we are than for 
 what we do ; so it is perhaps no wonder if 
 the young woman's reply strikes with an 
 unreasonable chill upon the asker's heart. 
 
 " You must have been very little used 
 to kindness all your life," he says, with 
 some brusqueness, "to be so dispropor- 
 tionately grateful for my trumpery civili- 
 ties. 
 
 She hesitates a moment, then : 
 
 "You are right," she replies; " I have 
 
 26 — 2
 
 ioo ALAS/ 
 
 not received any great kindness in my life 
 — justice, well, yes, I suppose so — but no, 
 not very much mercy." 
 
 Her candid and composed admission of 
 a need for mercy whets yet farther that 
 pained curiosity which has always been 
 one of the strongest elements in his un- 
 comfortable interest in her. But the very 
 sharpness of that interest makes him shy 
 away awkwardly from the subject of her 
 past. 
 
 " I always think," he says, "that there 
 is something fatuous in a man's apologizing 
 to a lady for not having been to see her, 
 as if the loss were hers, and not his." 
 
 4< Is there ? All the same, I am sorry 
 that you did not come." 
 
 This simple and unsophisticated impli- 
 cation of a liking for him would have 
 warmed again the uneasy heart that her 
 former speech had chilled had not he, 
 under the superficial though genuine regret 
 of her face, seen, still shining with steady 
 lustre, that radiance which has as little 
 been called forth by, as it can be dimmed
 
 AMELIA. 
 
 by him or anything relating to him. And 
 so he passes by in silence the expression 
 of that sorrow which he bitterly knows to 
 be so supportable. 
 
 The still spirit of the day seems to have 
 touched the very birds. They sing a few 
 low notes in veiled, chastened voices from 
 the fir-wood, and again are silent. The 
 clock tells the hours in quarters to the 
 doomed lives inside the monastery, self- 
 doomed to suffering and penance and 
 incarceration, even with the winning blue 
 of the Tuscan sky above their tonsured 
 heads, with the forget-me-nots pressing 
 their feet, and the nightingales singing 
 endless love-songs to them from the little 
 dark forest nigh at hand. 
 
 " I suppose," says Elizabeth presently, 
 in a reflective tone, "that the fact is, when 
 people are in your position — I mean on the 
 brink of a great deep happiness — they for- 
 get all lesser things ?" 
 
 He snatches a hasty glance of suspicion 
 at her. Is this her revenge for his neglect 
 of her? But nothing can look more inno-
 
 io2 ALAS! 
 
 cent or less ironical than her small profile, 
 bent towards the gigantic forget-me-nots 
 and the pulmonaria, azure as gentians. 
 
 11 Perhaps." 
 
 " The big fish " — her little face breaking 
 into one of her lovely smiles, which, by a 
 turn of her head from side to full, she offers 
 in its completeness to his gaze — "swallows 
 up all the little gudgeons ! Poor little 
 gudgeons." 
 
 " Poor little gudgeons I" he echoes 
 stupidly, and then begins to laugh at his 
 own wool-gathering. 
 
 " And now I suppose you will be going 
 directly — going home ?" pursues she, look- 
 ing at him and his laughter with a soft 
 surprise. 
 
 " I hope so ; and — and — you too ?" 
 
 She gives a start, and the sky-coloured 
 nosegay in her hand drops into her lap. 
 
 " We — we ? Why should we go home ? 
 We have nothing pleasant to go to, and " — 
 looking round with a passionate relish at 
 mountain, and suffused far plain, and sappy 
 spring grass — " we are so well — so infinitely
 
 AMELIA. 103 
 
 well here !" Then, pulling herself together, 
 and speaking in a more composed key, 
 " But yes, of course we, too, shall go by- 
 and-by ; this cannot last for ever — nothing 
 lasts for ever. That is the one thought 
 that has kept me alive all these years ; but 
 now " 
 
 She breaks off. 
 
 " But now ?" 
 
 Even as he watches her, putting this 
 echoed interrogation, he sees the radiance 
 breaking through the cloud his question 
 had gathered, as a very strong sun breaks 
 through a very translucent exhalation. 
 
 " But now ?" she repeats vaguely, and 
 smiling to herself, forgetful of his very 
 presence beside her — " But now ? Did I 
 say ' But now ?' Ah, here they are back 
 again !"
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " I am going to turn the tables on you," 
 says Amelia next morning to her lover, 
 after the usual endearments, which of late 
 he has been conscientiously anxious not to 
 scant or slur, have passed between them, 
 very fairly executed by him, and adoringly 
 accepted and returned by her; "you are 
 always arranging treats for me ; now I 
 have planned one for you !" 
 
 She looks so beaming with benevolent 
 joy as she makes this statement, that Jim 
 stoops and drops an extra kiss — not in the 
 bond — upon her lifted face. " Indeed, 
 dear!" he answers kindly, " I do not quite 
 know what I have done to deserve it ; but 
 I hope it is a nice one."
 
 AMELIA. 105 
 
 " It is very nice — delightful." 
 
 " Delightful, eh ?" echoes he, raising his 
 brows, while a transient wonder crosses his 
 mind as to what project she or anyone else 
 could suggest to him that, at this juncture 
 of his affairs, could merit that epithet ; 
 "well, am I to guess what it is? or are 
 you going to tell me ?" 
 
 Amelia's face still wears that smile of 
 complacent confidence in having some- 
 thing pleasant to communicate which has 
 puzzled her companion. 
 
 "We have never been at Vallombrosa, 
 have we ?" asks she. 
 
 "- Never." 
 
 " Well, we are going there to-morrow." 
 
 "Are we? is that your treat?" inquires 
 he, wondering what of peculiarly and dis- 
 tinctively festal for him this expedition may 
 be supposed to have above all their former 
 ones. 
 
 " And we are not going alone." 
 
 "There is nothing very exceptional in 
 that ; Cecilia is mostly good enough to 
 lend us her company."
 
 io6 ALAS! 
 
 " I am not thinking of Cecilia ; I have 
 persuaded " — the benevolent smile broaden- 
 ing across her cheeks — " I have persuaded 
 some friends of yours to join us." 
 
 It does not for an instant cross his mind 
 either to doubt or to affect uncertainty as 
 to who the friends of whom she speaks 
 may be ; but the suggestion is so pro- 
 foundly unwelcome to him, that not even 
 the certainty of mortifying the unselfish 
 creature before him can hinder him from 
 showing it. Her countenance falls. 
 
 " You are not glad ?" she asks crest- 
 fallenly, " you are not pleased ?" 
 
 It is impossible for him to say that he is, 
 and all that is left to him is to put his 
 vexation into words that may be as little as 
 possible fraught with disappointment to his 
 poor hearer's ear. 
 
 " I — I — had rather have had you to 
 myself." 
 
 " Would you really ?" she asks, in the 
 almost awed tones of one who, from being 
 quite destitute, has had the Koh-i-Noor 
 put into his hand, and whose fingers are
 
 AMELIA. 107 
 
 afraid to close over the mighty jewel ; 
 "would you really? then I am sorry I 
 asked them ; but " — with intense wistful- 
 ness — " if you only knew how I long to 
 give you a little pleasure, a little enjoy- 
 ment — you who have given me so infinitely 
 much." 
 
 If Miss Wilson were ever addicted to 
 the figure of speech called irony, she might 
 be supposed to be employing it now ; but 
 one glance at her simple face would show 
 that it expressed nothing but adoring grati- 
 tude. Her one good fortnight has spread 
 its radiant veil backwards over her eight 
 barren years. 
 
 He takes her hand, and passes the fingers 
 across his lips, murmuring indistinctly and 
 guiltily behind them : 
 
 " Do I really make you happy ?" 
 
 " Do you ?" — echoes she, while the 
 transfiguring tears well into her glorified 
 pale eyes — " I should not have thought it 
 possible that so much joy could have been 
 packed into any fortnight as I have had 
 crammed into mine !"
 
 io8 ALAS! 
 
 They have to set off to Vallombrosa at 
 seven o'clock in the morning, an hour at 
 which few of us are at our cleverest, 
 handsomest, or our best tempered ; nor is 
 the party of six, either in its proportion of 
 women to men — four to two — or in its 
 component parts, a very well adjusted one. 
 They are too numerous to be contained in 
 one carriage, and are therefore divided into 
 two separate bands — three and three. 
 Whether by some manoeuvre of the well- 
 meaning Amelia, or by some scarcely for- 
 tunate accident, Burgoyne finds himself 
 seated opposite to his betrothed and to 
 Elizabeth ; while Byng follows in the 
 second vehicle as vis-a-vis to Cecilia and 
 Mrs. Le Marchant. There is a general 
 feeling of wrongness about the whole 
 arrangement — a sense of mental discom- 
 fort equivalent to that physical one of 
 having put on your clothes inside out, or 
 buttoned your buttons into unanswering 
 button-holes. 
 
 Mrs. Le Marchant's face, as Burgoyne 
 catches sight of it now and then, as some
 
 AMELIA. 109 
 
 turn in the road reveals the inmates of the 
 closely- following second carnage to his 
 view, wears that uneasy and disquieted 
 look which always disfigures it when there 
 is any question of her being brought into 
 personal relation with strangers. And 
 Elizabeth, of whom he has naturally a 
 much nearer and more continuous view, 
 is plainly ill-at-ease. Miss Wilson has not 
 thought it necessary to mention to her 
 lover how strong had been the opposition 
 to her plan on the part of the objects of it ; 
 nor, that it was only because her proposal 
 was made viva voce, and therefore unescap- 
 able, that it had been reluctantly accepted 
 at last. At first Burgoyne had attributed 
 Elizabeth's evident ill-at-easeness to her 
 separation from Byng ; but he presently 
 discovers that it is what she possesses, and 
 not what she lacks, that is the chief source 
 of her malaise. During the latter part of 
 his own personal intercourse with her she 
 had been, when in his company, some- 
 times sad, sometimes wildly merry ; but 
 always entirely natural. Strange as it
 
 no ALAS! 
 
 may seem, it is obviously the presence of 
 Amelia that puts constraint upon her. 
 Before the spirit of that most unterrify- 
 ing of God's creatures, Elizabeth's " stands 
 rebuked." Once or twice he sees her 
 inborn gaiety — that gaiety whose exist- 
 ence he has so often noted as it struggles 
 up from under the mysterious weight of 
 sorrow laid upon it — spurt into life, only 
 to be instantly killed by the reassumption 
 of that nervous formal manner which not 
 all Amelia's gentle efforts can break 
 through. 
 
 A very grave trio they drive along 
 through the grave day. For it is, alas ! 
 a grave day — overcast, now turning to 
 rain, now growing fair again awhile. Not 
 a grain of Italy's summer curse, her chok- 
 ing white dust, assails their nostrils. It 
 must have rained all night. Through the 
 suburbs by the river, crossing and recross- 
 ing that ugly iron interloper the railway ; 
 by the river flowing at the foot of the fair 
 green hills, so green, so green on this day 
 of ripe accomplished spring. The whole
 
 AMELIA. in 
 
 country is one giant green garland, of 
 young wheat below and endless vine 
 necklaces above — necklaces of new juicy, 
 just-born, yet vigorous vine-leaves. The 
 very river runs green with the reflection of 
 the endless verdure on its banks. The 
 road is level as far as Pontassieve, the 
 town through which they roll, and then 
 it begins to mount — mounts between 
 garden-like hills, dressed in vine-leaves 
 and iris-flowers, and the dull fire of red 
 clover ; while the stream twists in flowing 
 companionship at the valley bottom, until 
 they turn abruptly away from it, up into a 
 steep and narrow valley, almost a gorge, 
 and climb up and up one side of it, turning 
 and winding continually to break the steep- 
 ness of the ascent. However broken, it is 
 steep still. But who would wish to pass 
 at more than a foot's pace through this 
 great sheet of lilac irises wrapping the 
 mountain side, past this bean -field that 
 greets the nostrils with its homely familiar 
 perfume, along this wealthy bit of hedge, 
 framed wholly of honeysuckle in flower.
 
 ii2 ALAS! 
 
 At sight of the latter Elizabeth gives a 
 little cry. 
 
 " Oh, what honeysuckle ! I must have 
 some ! I must get out ! Tell him to 
 stop !" 
 
 In a moment her commands are obeyed ; 
 in another moment Byng has sprung out 
 of the second carriage and is standing 
 beside her. The door of Byng's vehicle 
 is stiff apparently, and a sardonic smile 
 breaks over the elder man's face as he 
 hears the noise of the resounding kicks 
 administered to it by the younger one's 
 impatient foot. But he need not have 
 been in such a hurry — no one interferes 
 with his office of rifling the hedge of its 
 creamy and coral bugles. 
 
 Burgoyne gets out of the carriage ; but 
 it is only to walk to the other one and 
 assume Byng's vacated seat. 
 
 " Are you going to change places ?" 
 Amelia has asked rather chapfallenly as he 
 leaves her ; and he has given her hand a 
 hasty pressure, and answered affection- 
 ately —
 
 AMELIA. 113 
 
 "It will not be for long, dear ; but you 
 know " — with an expressive glance, and 
 what he rather too sanguinely hopes looks 
 like a smile in the direction of the flower- 
 gatherers — " fair play is a jewel !" 
 
 If his departure from the one vehicle is 
 deplored, it is not welcomed at the other. 
 Cecilia asks the same question as her sister 
 had put, though the intonation is different. 
 . "Are you going to change places?" — 
 adding — " do not you think we did very 
 w r ell as we were ?" 
 
 But probably he is too much occupied 
 in wrestling with the stiff door to hear her, 
 for he makes no answer beyond getting in. 
 The only reward that he receives for his 
 piece of self-sacrifice is a rapturous look of 
 gratitude from Byng, when he perceives 
 the changed position of his affairs, and 
 that recompense Jim had far rather have 
 been without. 
 
 They are off again. Being now second 
 in the little procession, Burgoyne has but 
 meagre and difficult views of the first ; but 
 now and again, when the road describes 
 
 vol. 11. 27
 
 ii4 ALAS! 
 
 an acuter angle than usual, he can by- 
 turning his whole body, under pretext of 
 admiring the view, snatch a glimpse of all 
 three occupants leaning their heads sociably 
 together, evidently in bright light talk. 
 After all, he had deceived himself. It is 
 he and not Amelia who had made her shy. 
 Even when he cannot see her, there come 
 to his ears little wafts of laughter, in which 
 her voice is mixed. He catches himself 
 trying to recall whether she had laughed 
 even once during the period of his being 
 her companion. There is not much mirth 
 in his own carriage. What a kill-joy he 
 has grown ! Cecilia, though her heart is 
 as pure as the babe unborn of any serious 
 designs on Byng, of which indeed she has 
 long seen the fruitlessness, yet thinks a 
 sulky brother-in-law-elect but a poor ex- 
 change for a handsome young acquaintance, 
 whom neither his good manners nor the 
 amount of his intimacy allow to sit opposite 
 to her in grumpy silence. Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant is obviously as ill at ease as was her 
 daughter when in his fellowship, though in
 
 AMELIA, 
 
 "5 
 
 this case a little observation shows him 
 that he counts for nothing in her discom- 
 fort of mind, but that she is watching the 
 other half of the party with an anxiety as 
 keen, if almost as covert, as his own. She 
 is too well-bred indeed not to endeavour 
 to keep up a decent show of conversation, 
 but as neither of her companions makes 
 any effort to second her, an ever-deepening 
 silence falls upon them as they advance, 
 nor, as the day grows older, is the weather 
 calculated to exhilarate their spirits. 
 
 The sky's frown becomes more and 
 more pronounced the higher they mount. 
 Through a village nobly seated on its hill- 
 top, but, like most Italian townlets, squalid 
 enough on a nearer view — up and up — up 
 and up — till they reach what were once 
 groves of stately chestnuts, but where the 
 hungry Tuscan axe has left nothing but 
 twigs and saplings, but never a spreading 
 tree ; then on into the fir-woods, which 
 are woods indeed, though even here the 
 hatchet's cruel tooth has begun to bite. 
 No sooner is their dark umbrage reached
 
 n6 ALAS! 
 
 than the mist, that has been hanging with 
 threatening lowness above the travellers' 
 heads, comes down close, blinding, clinging 
 like w r et flannel, and as thick. 
 
 " Perhaps it will lift," Jim says, with a 
 sort of dismal unlikely hopefulness as he 
 strains his eyes, trying to look down the 
 straight solemn fir aisles, with their files 
 upon files of tall stems, that seem to be 
 seen only as if through a thick gauze. 
 Neither of his companions has the spirit 
 necessary to echo the supposition. The 
 road winds endlessly, steeper and steeper 
 up through the mist. The tired horses 
 step wearily, and the unfortunate pleasure- 
 seekers are beginning to think that the 
 muffled monotony of firs, of winding road, 
 of painfully labouring horses, will never 
 end, when the vetturino turns round with 
 a smile on his fog-wet face, and says, 
 " Vallombrosa !" 
 
 Under other circumstances, the announce- 
 ment might have been cheering, might 
 have excited a poetic curiosity ; but as it 
 is, the hood of the vehicle — necessarily
 
 AMELIA. 117 
 
 raised some miles back — is so far poked 
 forward that nothing is to be seen but a 
 pour of rain — the rain has begun to de- 
 scend in torrents — a glass-door in a house- 
 wall opening to admit them, and a waiter 
 holding up a green umbrella to protect 
 their descent. Neither he nor the land- 
 lord, nor yet the chambermaid, show any 
 signs of mirth or wonder at their arrival 
 among the clouds on such a day. They 
 are used to mad Inglese. And amongst 
 the mad Inglese themselves there is cer- 
 tainly no temptation to mad merriment. 
 On such an occasion there is nothing to do 
 but eat, so they lunch dismally in a long, 
 bare dining-room, with a carpetless floor, 
 a table laid for a grossly improbable 
 number of guests, and a feeling of search- 
 ing cold. Having spun out their scanty 
 meal to the utmost limits of possibility, 
 and w r ashed it down with the weakest red 
 wine that ever lived in a wicker bottle, 
 they pass into a funereal salon, to which 
 the waiter invites them. Someone makes 
 the cheering announcement that they have
 
 n8 ALAS! 
 
 as yet been here only half an hour, and 
 that the horses must have two full hours 
 to bait before there can be any question of 
 beginning the return journey. And then 
 they amble about the room, looking at the 
 dreadful lithographs of Italy's plain King 
 and fair Queen on the walls ; at the vener- 
 able journals and gaudy English story- 
 book, so dull as to have been forgotten 
 by its owner, on the table. Their spirits 
 are not heightened by a pervading sense 
 as of being in a cellar, minus the wine. 
 The equipment of this pleasant apartment 
 is completed by a half-dead nosegay of 
 what must once have been charming 
 mountain blossoms. The sight decides 
 them. They must go out. Perhaps even 
 through this opaque cloud they may dimly 
 see the mountain flowers growing, the 
 mountain brooks dashing, \ which John 
 Milton has told them that — 
 
 " the Etrurian shades, 
 High over-arch'd imbower." 
 
 They all catch at the suggestion, when 
 made by Byng, and presently sally forth
 
 AMELIA. 119 
 
 to see as much of Yallombrosa as a fog 
 that would not have disgraced the Strand, 
 as a close blanket of almost confluent rain, 
 and as umbrellas held well down over their 
 cold noses, will let them ; Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant alone declines to be one of the party, 
 and is left sittingr swaddled in all the 
 superfluous wraps, on a horse-hair chair 
 in the salon, to stare at the wall and at 
 King Humbert's ugly face, until such time 
 as her companions see fit to release her. 
 It is no wonder that Burgoyne overhears 
 her eagerly whispering to Elizabeth a 
 request that she will not stay too long 
 away. And Elizabeth, whose spirits have 
 gone up like a rocket at the prospect of a 
 taste of the fresh air, and who knows what 
 else, lays her little face, crowned with a 
 deer-stalking cap, against her mother's, 
 and promisesjjftid skips away. 
 
 At first they all five keep together, wet 
 but sociable. They ask their way to the 
 Paradiso — the name sounds ironical — and 
 set off climbing up through the fir-wood in 
 the direction indicated ; along a path
 
 120 ALAS! 
 
 which in fair weather must be heavenly 
 with piny odours, but which is now only 
 a miry alternative of dripping stones and 
 muddy puddles. Through the mist they 
 see indeed fair flowers gleaming, yellow 
 anemones, unfamiliar and lovely, but they 
 are too drenched to pluck. The sound of 
 falling water guides them to where the 
 clear brook — clear even to-day — falls in 
 little cascades down the hill's face between 
 the pines. How delicious to sit on its flat 
 stones some hot summer's noon, with your 
 hands coolly straying among its grasses, 
 or dabbling in its bright water ; but 
 to-day they can but look at it sadly 
 from the low bridge, saying sighingly, 
 "If!" 
 
 They reach the goal, some cross, and all 
 floundering, the ladies with draggled skirts 
 and cold, dank ankles. The Paradiso is a 
 little house, a dependance apparently of the 
 hotel below — apparently also tenantless 
 and empty. It is built on the bare rock, 
 looking sheer down on — what ? on a 
 blanket of fog. What does, what can,
 
 AMELIA 
 
 that maddening blanket conceal ? Oh, if 
 they could but tear it in pieces, rend it 
 asunder, hack it with knives ; by any 
 means abolish its unsightly veil from over 
 the lovely face, they will now, with all 
 their climbing, all their early rising, never 
 see! But will not they? Even as they 
 look, despairingly straining their eyes, in 
 the vain effort to pierce that obscure and 
 baffling veil, there is a movement in it, a 
 stirring of the inert mass of vapour ; a 
 wind has risen, and is blowing coldly on 
 their brows, and in a moment, as it seems, 
 the maddening wet curtain is swept away 
 and up, as by some God-hand, the hand of 
 some spirit that has heard their lament 
 and has pitied them and said, " They have 
 come from afar ; it is their only chance ; 
 let us show it to them." The curtain has 
 rolled up and up, the sombre fir-wood 
 starts out, and the emerald meadows, the 
 lowest and nearest range of hills, then the 
 next, and then the next, and then the 
 furthest and highest of all. There thev 
 stand revealed, even the city, Florence, 
 t
 
 122 ALAS! 
 
 far away. They can make out her Duomo, 
 small and dim with distance, yet certainly 
 there ; in the sudden effulgence all the 
 valley alight and radiant. Range behind 
 range stand the hills ; belated vapour 
 wreaths floating, thin as lawn, up their 
 flanks ; wonderful dreamy patches of 
 radiance on the far slopes ; marvellous 
 amethysts starring their breasts. Mystery 
 and beauty, colour and space, sky and 
 lovely land, where, five minutes ago, 
 there was nothing but choking fog. Bur- 
 goyne stands as in a trance, vaguely con- 
 scious — trance-wise too — that Elizabeth is 
 near him ; all his soul passed into his eyes ; 
 stands — how long ? He hardly knows. 
 Before that fair sight time seems dead ; 
 but even as he yet looks, smiling as one 
 smiles at anything surpassingly lovely, 
 the cloud-wreaths float downwards again, 
 wreaths at first, then great volumes, then 
 one universal sheet of vapour, impenetrably 
 dense as before. Vanished are the Apen- 
 nine slopes, sun-kissed and dreamy ; van- 
 ished the distant Arno plain ; vanished
 
 AMELIA. 123 
 
 even the near pines. He can scarce see 
 his hand before him. And yet he can see 
 Elizabeth's face transfigured and quivering, 
 lifted to his — yes, to his — though Byng is 
 on her other side ; her eyes full of tender 
 tears of ravishment, while her low voice 
 says sighingly : 
 
 "It is gone; but we have seen it! 
 Nothing can ever take that from us ! 
 nothing ! nothing !" 
 
 And although the next moment she is 
 reabsorbed into the fog and Byng, though 
 for the rest of the deplorable walk he scarce 
 catches sight again of the little brown head 
 and the soaked deer-stalking cap, yet it 
 makes a gentle warmth about his chilled 
 heart to think that, in her moments of 
 highest emotion, it is her impulse to turn 
 to him.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " Oh, gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord, 
 And hath so humbled me that I confess 
 There is no grief to his correction 
 Nor to his service no such joy on earth. 
 Now no discourse except it be of Love ; 
 Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep 
 Upon the very naked name of Love." 
 
 Not once again, so long as they remain 
 at Vallombrosa, does the envious cloud- 
 blanket lift ; and, after slopping about for 
 sometime longer, in the vain hope that it 
 will, Burgoyne and his two female relatives- 
 elect return to the inn, all fallen very silent. 
 The other two members of the party have 
 disappeared into the fog. At the door of 
 the hotel they find Mrs. Le Marchant, who 
 has broken from her cerements, and is
 
 AMELIA. i2 5 
 
 looking anxiously out. As she catches 
 sight of them the look of tension on her 
 face lessens. 
 
 " Oh, here you are !" says she. " I am 
 so glad ; and the others — no doubt the 
 others are close behind." 
 
 "We know nothing about the others," 
 replies Cecilia, with some ill-humour, taking 
 upon her the office of spokeswoman, which 
 neither of her companions seems in any 
 hurry to assume ; " the others took French 
 leave of us an hour ago. Oh dear, how 
 wet I am ! What a horrible excursion ! 
 How I detest Vallombrosa !" 
 
 Amelia is to the full as wet as her sister : 
 nothing can well be more lamentable than 
 the appearance of either ; and upon Amelia's 
 face there is, in addition to a handsome 
 share of splashes of rain, a look of mortifi- 
 cation and crestfallenness ; but she now 
 puts in her word, with her usual patience 
 and thoughtful good-temper. 
 
 " I do not think you need be in the least 
 anxious about them," she says, observing 
 the immediate relapse into what seems
 
 126 ALAS! 
 
 an exaggerated concern following instantly 
 upon Cecilia's remark on Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant's features; "they were with us not 
 long ago. We were certainly all together 
 not so long ago ; they were with us at the 
 Paradiso — they were certainly with us at 
 the Paradiso ?" turning with an interro- 
 gative air to Burgoyne. 
 
 " Yes, they were certainly with us at the 
 Paradiso," he assents, not thinking it neces- 
 sary to add why he is so very certain as to 
 this fact. 
 
 " They must have so much inducement 
 to loiter this charming weather," cries 
 Cecilia, with an exasperated laugh. " Oh, 
 how wet I am ! I do not expect that we 
 shall any of us forget Vallombrosa in a 
 hurry ! I shall go and ask the chamber- 
 maid to lend me some dry shoes and 
 stockings." 
 
 With these words she walks towards the 
 staircase and climbs it, leaving a muddy 
 imprint on each step to mark her progress 
 as she mounts. 
 
 Amelia does not at once follow her
 
 AMELIA. 127 
 
 example. She remains standing where 
 she was, her arms hanging listlessly by 
 her sides, and the expression of crestfallen- 
 ness deepened on her fagged face. Her 
 lover is touched by her look, and, going 
 up to her, lays his hand kindly and solicit- 
 ously on her shoulder. 
 
 " Umbrellas are not what they were in 
 my days," he says, trying to smile. " You 
 are quite as wet as Cis, though you do not 
 proclaim your sufferings nearly so loudly. 
 Had not you better go and see whether 
 the chambermaid owns two pairs of dry 
 stockings ?" 
 
 She lifts her eyes with wistful gratitude 
 to his. 
 
 "This is my treat," she says slowly; 
 " my first treat to you ; oh, poor Jim !" 
 
 There is a depth of compassion in her 
 tone as disproportioned to the apparent 
 cause as had been Mrs. Le Marchant's 
 anxiety for her daughter's return, and 
 beneath it he winces. 
 
 "Why do you pity me?" he inquires 
 half indignantly. "Am I —
 
 i23 ALAS! 
 
 " 'A milksop ; one that never in his life 
 Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow ?' 
 
 What do I care for a little rain ?" Adding 
 cheerfully, " You shall give me a second 
 treat, dear ; we will come here again by 
 ourselves when the sun shines." 
 
 " By ourselves — when the sun shines !" 
 echoes she, as if repeating a lesson ; and 
 then she goes off docilely, in obedience to 
 his suggestion, in search of dry raiment. 
 
 He rejoins Mrs. Le Marchant, whose 
 unaccountable fears have led her beyond 
 the house's shelter out into the rain, where 
 she stands looking down that river of mud 
 which represents the road by which she 
 hopes to see the truants reappear. 
 
 " I think you are unnecessarily alarmed," 
 he says, in a reassuring and remonstrating 
 tone. " What harm could have happened 
 to them ?" 
 
 She does not answer, her eyes, into 
 which the rain is beating under her 
 umbrella brim, still fixed upon the empty 
 road. 
 
 "Is she — is she apt to take cold ?" he
 
 AMELIA. 129 
 
 asks, his own tone catching the infection 
 of her vague and nameless disquiet. 
 
 "Yes — no — not particularly, I think. 
 Oh, it is not that !" — her composure break- 
 ing down into an unaffected outburst of 
 distress — "It is not that! Do not you 
 understand ? Oh, how unwilling I was to 
 come here to-day ! It is — do not you see ? 
 Oh, I should not mind in the least if it had 
 been you that were with her !" 
 
 " If it had been I that was with her?" 
 repeats Jim slowly, not at the first instant 
 comprehending, nor even at the second 
 quite taking in the full, though uninten- 
 tional, uncomplimentariness of this speech ; 
 which however, before his companion again 
 takes up her parable, has tinglingly reached 
 ■ — what? His heart, or only his vanity? 
 They lie very close together. 
 
 " Why did not he go home with his 
 mother ?" pursues Mrs. Le Marchant, still 
 in that voice of intense vexation. " It 
 would have been so much more natural 
 that he should, and I am sure that she 
 wished it." 
 
 vol. 11. 28
 
 130 ALAS/ 
 
 " You are making me feel extremely- 
 uncomfortable," says Burgoyne gravely ; 
 " when I remember that it was I who 
 introduced him to you." 
 
 " Oh, I am not blaming you !" replies 
 she, with an obvious effort to resume her 
 usual courteous manner. " Please do not 
 think that I am blaming you. How could 
 you help it ?" 
 
 " I thought you liked him." 
 
 " Oh, so I do — so we both do !" cries 
 the poor woman agitatedly. " That is the 
 worst of it ! If I did not like him, I should 
 not mind ; at least, I should not mind half 
 so much." 
 
 " I am very sorry," he begins ; but she 
 interrupts him. 
 
 " Do not be sorry," she says remorse- 
 fully ; " you have nothing to say to it. I 
 do not know, I am sure " — looking grate- 
 fully at him through the rain — " why I am 
 always regaling you with my worries ; but 
 you are so dependable — we both feel that 
 you are so dependable." 
 
 " Am 1 ?" says he, with a melancholy air
 
 AMELIA. 131 
 
 that does not argue much gratification at 
 the compliment. " Do not be too sure of 
 that." 
 
 But she does not heed his disclaimer. 
 
 "We have been so happy here," she 
 goes on ; " I do not mean here " — looking 
 round with an involuntary smile at the 
 envelope of wet vapour that encases them 
 both — " but at Florence; so peacefully, 
 blessedly happy, she and I — you do not 
 know " — with an appealing touch of pathos 
 — "what a dear little companion she is! — 
 so happy that I naturally do not want our 
 memory of the place to be spoilt by any 
 painful contretemps. You can understand 
 that, cannot you ?" 
 
 It is senseless of him ; but yet, little as 
 he can comprehend why it should be so, 
 the idea of Byng's love being described as 
 a " painful contretemps " presents itself not 
 disagreeably to his mind. For whatever 
 mysterious reason, it is apparent that even 
 Byng's own mother cannot be much more 
 adverse to his suit than is the lady before 
 him. 
 
 28—2
 
 132 ' ALAS! 
 
 " I can perfectly enter into your feelings," 
 he answers, with sympathetic gravity ; " but 
 do not you know that ' a watched pot never 
 boils ' ? As long as you are looking for 
 them, they will never appear ; but the 
 moment that your back is turned they will 
 probably come round the corner at once." 
 
 " I think it is the truest proverb in the 
 world," she says, with an impatient sigh ; 
 but she allows him to guide her and her 
 umbrella back to the inn. 
 
 Burgoyne's prediction is not verified ; 
 probably he had no very great faith in it 
 himself. Mrs. Le Marchant's back has, for 
 the best part of an hour, been turned upon 
 the mountain road, and the stragglers have 
 not yet rejoined the main body. There 
 has been plenty of time for Cecilia to be 
 thoroughly dried, warmed, comforted, and 
 restored to good humour ; for the vetturino 
 to send in and ask whether he shall not 
 put the horses to ; for Amelia to exhaust 
 all her little repertory of soothing hypo- 
 theses ; for Mrs. Le Marchant to stray in 
 restless misery from salon to salle-a-manger
 
 AMELIA. 133 
 
 and back again, and for Burgoyne to pull 
 gloomily at a large cigar in the hall by 
 himself, before at length the voices of the 
 truants are heard. 
 
 Burgoyne being, as I have said, in the 
 hall, and therefore nearest the door of 
 entrance, has the earliest sight of them. 
 His first glance tells him that the blow 
 apprehended by Mrs. Le Marchant has 
 fallen. Of Elizabeth, indeed, he scarcely 
 catches a glimpse, as she passes him pre- 
 cipitately, hurrying to meet her mother, 
 who, at the sound of her voice, has come 
 running into the outer room. But Byng ! 
 Byng has not experienced so many very 
 strong emotions in his short life as to have 
 had much practice in veiling them from 
 the eyes of others when they come, and 
 the gauze now drawn over his intolerable 
 radiance is of the thinnest description. 
 Again that earnest desire to hit him hard 
 assails the elder friend. 
 
 11 Why, you are back before us !" cries 
 the young man. 
 
 "Yes, we are back before you," replies
 
 134 
 
 ALAS I 
 
 Burgoyne ; and if the penalty had been 
 death, he could not at that moment have 
 added one syllable to the acrid assent. 
 
 "Are we late?" asks Elizabeth tremu- 
 lously ; "I am afraid we are late — I am 
 afraid we have kept you waiting ! Oh, I 
 am so sorry !" 
 
 She looks with an engaging timidity of 
 apology from one to other of the sulky 
 countenances around her ; and Burgoyne 
 stealing a look at her, their eyes meet. 
 He is startled by the singularity of expres- 
 sion in hers. Whatever it denotes, it 
 certainly is not the stupid simplicity of 
 rapture to be read, in print as big as a 
 poster's, in Byng's. And yet among the 
 many ingredients that go to make up that 
 shy fevered beam, rapture is undoubtedly 
 one. 
 
 " Did you lose yourselves ? Did you 
 go further into the wood ?" asks Cecilia, 
 with a curiosity that is, considering the 
 provocation given, not unjustifiable. 
 
 They both reply vaguely that they had 
 lost themselves, that they had gone deeper
 
 AMELIA 
 
 *35 
 
 into the wood. It is obvious to the meanest 
 intelligence that neither of them has the 
 slightest idea where they have been. 
 
 " I may as well tell the driver to put the 
 horses in," says Burgoyne, in a matter-of- 
 fact voice, glad of an excuse to absent 
 himself. 
 
 When he comes back, he finds the 
 Le Marchants standing together in the 
 window, talking in a low voice, and Byng 
 hovering near them. It is evident to Jim 
 that the elder woman has no wish for 
 converse with the young man ; but in his 
 present condition of dizzy exhilaration, 
 he is quite unaware of that fact. He 
 approaches her indeed (as the unobserved 
 watcher notes) with a dreadful air of filial 
 piety, and addresses her in a tone of 
 apology it is true, but with a twang of 
 intimacy that had never appeared in his 
 voice before. 
 
 4 'You must not blame her; indeed you 
 must not ! it was entirely my fault. I am 
 awfully sorry that you were alarmed, but 
 indeed there was no cause. What did you
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 think had happened? Did you think" — 
 with an excited laugh of triumph and a 
 bright blush — "that I had run off with 
 her ?" 
 
 The speech is in extremely bad taste, 
 since, whatever may be the posture of 
 affairs between himself and Elizabeth, it 
 is morally impossible that her mother can 
 yet be enlightened as to it ; the familiarity 
 of it is therefore premature and the jocosity 
 ill-placed. No one can be more disposed 
 to judge it severely than its unintended 
 auditor ; but even he is startled by the 
 effect it produces. 
 
 Without making the smallest attempt at 
 an answer, Mrs. Le Marchant instantly 
 turns her shoulder upon the young man — a 
 snub of which Jim would have thought so 
 gentle-mannered a person quite incapable, 
 and w r alks away from him with so deter- 
 mined an air that not even a person in the 
 seventh heaven of drunkenness can mistake 
 her meaning. Nor does Elizabeth's con- 
 duct offer him any indemnification. She 
 follows her mother a little more slowly ;
 
 :-- 
 
 and, as she passes Jim. he sees that she 
 shaking violently, and that her fac- 
 white as chalk. A sort of generous 
 indignation against the mother for spoiling 
 the poor little soul's first moments of t. 
 mixes curiously in his mind, with a less 
 noble satisfaction at the rejection that 
 there are undoubtedly breakers ahead of 
 Byng. 
 
 "How — how are we to divide?" cries 
 Cecilia, as they all stand at the door while 
 the two carriages drive up. 
 
 No one answers. 7rt irrir.^t. -r.tr.: 
 seems planned by no one in particular, 
 and yet, as he drives down the hill, 
 Burgoyne finds himself sitting oppcr 
 the two Misses Wilson. He is than. 
 that the raised hood and unfurled umbrellas 
 of the second equipage prevent his having 
 any ocular evidence of the e: hat that 
 
 .: leather and that dripping s2 
 But even this consolation is not long left 
 him. As they leave the fir- wood. :. 
 come out of the clouds too, into clear, 
 lower air. Hoods are pushed back and
 
 i 3 8 ALAS! 
 
 umbrellas shut. The horses, in good heart, 
 with homeward-turned heads, pricked with 
 emulation by another carriage ahead of 
 them, trot cheerfully down the road — the 
 road with all its bent-elbow turnings — 
 down, down, into the valley beneath. But 
 the clouds that have rolled away off the 
 evening sky seem to have settled down 
 with double density upon the spirit of 
 Burgoyne and his companions. Even the 
 fountain of Cecilia's chatter is dried. Once 
 she says suddenly a propos cie bottes : 
 
 " She must be years older than he !" 
 To which Amelia quickly rejoins— 
 
 " But she does not look it." 
 
 It is almost the only remark she makes 
 during the long drive, and Burgoyne is 
 thankful to her for her silence. Conscious 
 of and grateful for her magnanimity as he 
 is, there is yet something that jars upon 
 him in her intuition of his thoughts, and 
 in her eager championship of that other 
 woman. He looks out blankly at the 
 flowers, wetly smiling from field and bank, 
 at the endless garden of embracing vines
 
 AMELIA. 1 39 
 
 and embraced mulberries, joining their 
 young leafage ; at the stealing river and 
 the verdurous hill-sides. In vain for him 
 Italy's spring laughter broadens across the 
 eternal youth of her face. 
 
 On reaching Florence and the Anglo- 
 Americain, he would fain enter and spend 
 the evening with his betrothed. He has a 
 feverish horror of being left alone with his 
 own thoughts, but she gently forbids him. 
 
 "It would not be fair upon father and 
 Sybilla," she says. " I am afraid they have 
 not been getting on very well tete-a-tete 
 together all this wet day, and I should not 
 be much good to you in any case. I feel 
 stupid. You will say" — smiling — "that 
 there is nothing very new in that ; but I 
 am quite beyond even my usual mark to- 
 night. Good-night, dear ; I humbly beg 
 your pardon for having caused you to spend 
 such a wretched day. I will never give 
 you another treat — never, never! it was 
 my first and last attempt." 
 
 She turns from him dejectedly, and he 
 is himself too dejected to attempt any
 
 140 ALAS/ 
 
 reassuring falsities. She would not have 
 believed him if he had told her that it had 
 not been a wretched day to him, and the 
 publicity of their place of parting forbids 
 him to administer even the silent consola- 
 tion of a kiss. And yet he feels a sort of 
 remorse at having said nothing, as the 
 door closes upon her depressed back. 
 Backs can look quite as depressed as faces. 
 The lateness of their start home has thrown 
 their return late. Burgoyne reflects that 
 he may as well dine at once, and then 
 trudge through his solitary evening as best 
 he may. Heaven knows at what hour 
 Byng may return. Shall he await his 
 coming, and so get over the announce- 
 ment of his bliss to-night, or put the dark 
 hours between himself and it ? 
 
 He decides in favour of getting it over 
 to-night, up to whatever small hour he 
 may be obliged to attend his friend's 
 arrival. But he has not to wait nearly 
 so long as he expects. He has not to 
 wait at all, hardly. Before he has left his 
 own room, while he is still making such
 
 AMELIA. i 4 i 
 
 toilette for his own company as self-respect 
 requires, the person whom he had not 
 thought to behold for another four or 
 five hours enters — enters with head held 
 high, with joy-tinged, smooth cheeks, and 
 with a superb lamp of love and triumph 
 lit in each young eye. A passing move- 
 ment of involuntary admiration traverses 
 the other's heart as he looks at him. This 
 is how the human animal ought to — was 
 originally intended to — look ! How very 
 far the average specimen has departed 
 from the type ! There is not much trace 
 of admiration, however, in the tone which 
 he employs for his one brief word of inter- 
 rogation : 
 
 "Already?" 
 
 " I was sent away," replies Byng, in 
 a voice whose intoxication pierces even 
 through the first four small words ; " they 
 sent me away — they would not let me go 
 further than the house-door. I say 'they,' 
 but of course she had no hand in it — she, 
 not she. She would not have sent me 
 away, God bless her ! it was her mother,
 
 142 ALAS/ 
 
 of course — how could she have had the 
 heart?" 
 
 Burgoyne would no doubt have made 
 some answer in time ; though the " she," 
 the implication of Elizabeth's willingness 
 for an indefinite amount of her lover's com- 
 pany, the " God bless her," give him a 
 sense of choking. 
 
 " But I do not blame Mrs. Le Mar- 
 chant," pursues Byng, in a rapt, half- 
 absent key. " Who would not wish to 
 monopolize her ? Who would not grudge 
 the earth leave to kiss her sweet foot ? 
 
 "All I can is nothing 
 To her whose worth makes other worthies nothing. 
 She is alone !" 
 
 "That at least is not your fault," replies 
 Burgoyne drily ; " you have done your 
 best to avert that catastrophe." 
 
 But to speak to the young man now is 
 of as much avail as to address questions 
 or remonstrances to one walking in his 
 sleep. 
 
 "If she had allowed me, I would have 
 lain on her threshold all night ; I would
 
 AMELIA. 143 
 
 have been the first thing that her heavenly 
 eye lit on ; I would " 
 
 But Burgoyne's phial of patience is for 
 the present emptied to the dregs. 
 
 11 You would have made a very great 
 fool of yourself, I have not the least doubt. 
 Why try to persuade a person of what he 
 is already fully convinced ? But as Miss 
 Le Marchant happily did not wish for you 
 as a doormat, perhaps it is hardly worth 
 while telling me what you would have done 
 if she had." 
 
 The sarcastic words, ill-natured and un- 
 sympathetic as they sound in their own 
 speaker's ears, yet avail to bring the young 
 dreamer but a very few steps lower down 
 his ladder of bliss. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he says sweet- 
 temperedly ; "I suppose I am a hideous 
 bore to-night ; I suppose one must always 
 be a bore to other people when one is 
 tremendously happy." 
 
 " It is not your being tremendously 
 happy that I quarrel with," growls Bur- 
 goyne, struggling to conquer, or at least
 
 144 ALAS! 
 
 tone down, the intense irritability of nerves 
 that his friend's flights provoke. " You 
 are perfectly right to be that if you can 
 manage to compass it ; but what I should 
 be glad to arrive at is your particular 
 ground for it in the present case." 
 
 The question, sobering in its tendency, has 
 yet for sole effect the setting Byng off again 
 with spread pinions into the empyrean. 
 
 " What particular ground I have ?" he 
 repeats, in a dreamy tone of ecstasy. 
 " You ask what particular ground I have ? 
 Had ever anyone cause to be so royally 
 happy as I ?" 
 
 He pauses a moment or two, steeped in 
 a rapture of oblivious reverie, then goes 
 on, still as one only half waked from a 
 beatific vision : 
 
 " I had a prognostic that to-day would 
 be the culminating day — something told 
 me that to-day would be the day ; and 
 when you gave me up your seat in her 
 carriage — how could you be so magnifi- 
 cently generous ? How can I ever ade- 
 quately show you my gratitude ?"
 
 AMELIA. 145 
 
 " Yes, yes ; never mind that." 
 "Then, later on, in the wood" — his 
 voice sinking, as that of one who ap- 
 proaches a Holy of Holies — " when that 
 blessed mist wrapped her round, wrapped 
 her lovely body round, so that I was able 
 to withdraw her from you, so that you did 
 not perceive that she was gone — were not 
 you really aware of it ? Did not it seem 
 to you as if the light had gone out of the 
 day ? When we stood under those dripping 
 
 trees, as much alone as if " 
 
 "I do not think that there is any need 
 to go into those details," interrupts Bur- 
 goyne, in a hard voice ; " I imagine that 
 in these cases history repeats itself with 
 very trifling variations ; what I should be 
 glad if you would tell me is, whether I am 
 to understand that you have to-day asked 
 Miss Le Marchant to marry you?" 
 
 Byng brings his eyes, which have been 
 lifted in a sort of trance to the ceiling, down 
 to the prosaic level of his Mentor's severe 
 and tight-lipped face. 
 
 " When you put it in that way," he says, 
 vol. 11. 29
 
 146 ALAS/ 
 
 in an awed half- whisper, " it does seem an 
 inconceivable audacity on my part that I, 
 who but a few days ago was crawling at 
 her feet, should dare to-day to reach up to 
 the heaven of her love." 
 
 Burgoyne had known perfectly well that 
 it was coming ; but yet how much worse is 
 it than he had expected ! 
 
 ■ • Then you did ask her to marry you ?" 
 
 But Byng has apparently fled back on 
 the wings of fantasy into the wet woods of 
 Vallombrosa, for he makes no verbal answer. 
 
 " She said yes ?" asks Burgoyne, raising 
 his voice, as if he were addressing someone 
 deaf. "Am I to understand that she said 
 yes ?" 
 
 At the sound of that hard naked query 
 the dreamer comes out of his enchanted 
 forest again. 
 
 "I do not know what she said ; I do 
 not think she said anything," he answers, 
 murmuring the words laggingly ; while, as 
 he goes on, the fire of his madness spires 
 high in his flashing eyes. " We have got 
 beyond speech, she and I ! We have
 
 AMELIA. i 47 
 
 reached that region where hearts and 
 intelligences meet without the need of 
 those vulgar go-betweens — words." 
 
 There is a moment's pause, broken only 
 by the commonplace sound of an electric 
 bell rung by some inmate of the hotel. 
 
 " And has Mrs. Le Marchant reached 
 that region too?" inquires Jim presently, 
 with an irony he cannot restrain. " Does 
 she too understand without words, or have 
 you been obliged, in her case, to employ 
 those vulgar go-betweens ?" 
 
 " She must understand — she does — un- 
 doubtedly she does !" cries Byng, whose 
 drunkenness shares with the more ordinary 
 kind the peculiarity of believing whatever 
 he wishes to be not only probable but in- 
 evitable. " Who could see us together 
 and be in uncertainty for a moment ? 
 And her mother has some of her fine 
 instincts, her delicate intuitions ; not, of 
 course, to the miraculous extent that she 
 possesses them. In her they amount to 
 genius !" 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ; but did you trust 
 
 29 — 2
 
 148 ALAS! 
 
 entirely to Mrs. Le Marchant's instincts, 
 or did you broach the subject to her at all ? 
 You must have had time, plenty of time, 
 during that long drive home." 
 
 " Well, no," answers Byng slowly, and 
 with a slight diminution of radiance. " I 
 meant to have approached it ; I tried to do 
 so once or twice ; but I thought, I fancied 
 — probably it was only fancy — that she 
 wished to avoid it." 
 
 " To avoid it ?" 
 
 " Oh, not in any offensive, obvious way ; 
 it was probably only in my imagination 
 that she shirked it at all — and I did not 
 make any great efforts. It was all so 
 perfect " — the intoxication getting the 
 upper hand again — " driving along in 
 that balmy flood of evening radiance — 
 did you see how even the tardy sun 
 came out for us ? — with that divine face 
 opposite to me ! Such a little face !" — his 
 voice breaking into a tremor — " Is not it 
 inconceivable, Jim, how so much beauty 
 can be packed into so tiny a compass ?" 
 
 Burgoyne has all the time had his
 
 AMELIA. 149 
 
 brushes in his hand, the brushes with which 
 he has been preparing himself for his soli- 
 tary dinner. He bangs them down now on 
 the table. How can he put a period to 
 the ravings of this maniac ? And yet not 
 so maniac either. What gives the sharpest 
 point to his present suffering is the con- 
 sciousness that he would have made quite 
 as good a maniac himself if he had had the 
 chance. This consciousness instils a few 
 drops of angry patience into his voice, as, 
 disregarding the other's high-flown ques- 
 tion, he puts one that is not at all high- 
 flown himself. 
 
 " Then you have not told Mrs. Le 
 Marchant yet ?" 
 
 But the smile that the memory — so 
 fresh, only half an hour old — of Elizabeth's 
 loveliness has laid upon Byng's lips still 
 lingers there ; and makes his response 
 dreamy and vague. 
 
 " No, not yet ; not yet ! She had taken 
 one of her gloves off ; her little hand lay, 
 palm upward, on her knees almost all the 
 way ; once or twice I thought of taking it,
 
 :-: ALA S 
 
 of taking possession of it, of telling her 
 mother in that way : but I did not. It 
 seemed — out in the sunshine, no longer in 
 the sacred mist of that blessed wood — too 
 high an audacity, and I did not !'' 
 
 He stops, his words dying away into a 
 whisper, his throat's too narrow passage 
 choked by the rushing ocean of his im- 
 mense felicity. 
 
 Burgoyne looks at him in silence, again 
 with a sort of admiration mixed with wrath. 
 How has this commonplace, pink-and-white 
 boy managed to scale such an altitude, 
 while he himself, in all his life, though 
 with a better intelligence, and, as he had 
 thought, with a deeper heart, had but 
 prowled around the foot ? Why should he 
 try to drag him down ? On the peak of 
 that great Jungfrau of rapture no human 
 foot can long stand. 
 
 "As I told you. Mrs. Le Marchant 
 turned me away from their door," pursues 
 Byng. "It struck me — I could not pay 
 much attention to the fact, for was not I 
 bidding htr good-night — taking farewell of
 
 1- 
 
 if it were so~ coatmaes 
 
 
 - - 
 
 "aid: 
 
 : : rr 
 
 ;- r - -
 
 t5* ----- 
 
 till morning ? The morning light will cer- 
 tainly see him tumbling at the least some 
 few kilometres down. He decides gener- 
 ously to leave him in present possession of 
 his peak : but yet. so inconsistent is human 
 nature, his next speech can have no drift 
 but that of giving a slight jog to his friends 
 towering confidence. 
 
 " And your own mother?" 
 
 It may generally be concluded that a 
 
 person has not a very pertinent response to 
 
 give to a question if his only answer to that 
 
 question be to repeat it in the same words. 
 
 My own mother ? 
 
 " Yes : you will write at once to tell her, 
 I suppose ' 
 
 For a second the voun£ man's forehead 
 clouds, then he breaks into an excited lau^h. 
 
 "Tell her? I should rather think I 
 should ! Do you suppose that I shall lose 
 a moment in telling everybody I know — 
 everybody I ever heard of? I want you 
 to tell everybody too — ever}- single soul of 
 your acquaintance ! "
 
 a:.: el: a. -; 
 
 " Tell Amelia : tell Cecilia ? * — quite un- 
 
 aie, in his excitement, of the freedom 
 he is taking, for the first time in his life. 
 
 tfa those young ladies' Christian names — 
 
 ,11 the other one — the sick one; tell 
 them all! I want h fed that all my 
 
 friends. everybody I know, welccrr.t her — 
 hold out their arms to her. I want then: 
 all to tell her they are glad — you most of 
 all, of course, old chap : she will not think 
 it is all right till you haye given your con- 
 sent ! — laughing again with that bubbling- 
 over of superfluous joy — " Do you know — 
 it seems incomprehensible now — but there 
 
 is a moment when I was madly jealous 
 of you ? I was telling her about it to-c: 
 we were laughing over it together in the 
 wood. 
 
 Burgoyne feels that one more mennoa 
 of that wood will convert him into a lunatic, 
 quite as indisputable as his companion, only 
 very much more dangerous. 
 
 •Indeed!" he says grimly. "I should 
 have thought you might have found a more 
 interesting subject of conversatd:
 
 154 ALAS! 
 
 M Perhaps I was not so very far out 
 either " — possibly dimly perceiving, even 
 through the golden haze of his own glory, 
 the lack of enjoyment of his last piece of 
 news conveyed by Jim's tone — "for she 
 has an immense opinion of you. I do not 
 know anyone of whom she has so high an 
 opinion ; she says you are so dependable." 
 
 The adjective, as applied to himself by 
 Elizabeth and her mother, has not the 
 merit of novelty in the hearer's ears, which 
 is perhaps the reason why the elation that 
 he must naturally feel on hearing it does 
 not translate itself into words. 
 
 " So dependable," repeats Byng, appar- 
 ently pleased with the epithet. " She says 
 you give her the idea of being a sort of 
 rock ; you will come to-morrow, and wish 
 her joy, will not you ?" 
 
 " I am afraid that my wishing it her will 
 not help her much to it," answers Bur- 
 goyne, rather sadly; "but I do not think 
 you need much doubt that I do wish it. 
 Joy" — repeating the word over reflectively 
 — " it is a big thing to wish anyone."
 
 AMELIA. i S5 
 
 The extreme dampness of his tone arrests 
 for a few minutes Byng's jubilant paean. 
 
 "You do not think that my mother 
 will be pleased with the news ?" he asks 
 presently, in a changed and hesitating key. 
 
 "I do not think about it : I know she 
 will not !" 
 
 "I suppose not; and yet" — with an 
 accent of stupefaction — " it is inconceivable 
 that she. who has always shown such a 
 tender sympathy for me in any paltry little 
 bit of luck that has happened to me, 
 should not rejoice with me when all 
 heaven ope " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; of course." 
 
 " Do you think " — with a gleam of hope 
 — '"that my mother may have tried to 
 dissuade me because she thought I was 
 only laying up disappointment for myselt — 
 because she thought it so unlikely that 
 should deign to stoop to me ?" 
 
 Bureovne shakes his head. 
 
 11 Perhaps," he says, with the slowness 
 oi a man who is saying what he hims 
 does not believe, "a part of your moth
 
 156 ALAS! 
 
 dislike to the idea may be in the fact of 
 Miss Le Marchant's being older than you." 
 
 " Older /" cries Byng, with almost a 
 shout of angry derision at the suggestion. 
 " What have creatures like her to do with 
 age ? I neither know nor care what her 
 age is ! If you know, do not tell me ! I 
 will not listen ! Upon that exquisite body 
 time and change are powerless to work 
 their hideous metamorphoses !" 
 
 " Fiddlesticks!" replies Burgoyne gruffly. 
 " If she live long enough, she will be an 
 old woman, and will look like one, I 
 suppose !" though, even as he speaks, he 
 realizes that to him this is almost as 
 incredible as to the young madman whom 
 he is so pitilessly snubbing. " But, how- 
 ever that may be, I think you had better 
 make up your mind to meeting the most 
 resolved opposition on the part of your 
 mother." 
 
 " I believe you are right," replies Byng, 
 out of whose voice his kind Mentor has at 
 last succeeded in momentarily conjuring 
 the exaltation. " Her prejudice against
 
 AMELIA. 157 
 
 them, against her, always filled me with 
 stupefaction. I never dared trust myself 
 to discuss it with her ; I was afraid that if 
 I did I misfht be led into saving something 
 to her, something I should be sorry for 
 afterwards. Thank God, I have never 
 spoken unkindly to her in all my life 
 
 • • You would have been a sweep if you 
 had!" interjects Jim. 
 
 11 I never heard her cn V e anv reason for 
 it, did you? It was as baseless as it was 
 senseless." After a pause, his voice taking 
 on again its inflection of confident, soaring 
 triumph : " But it cannot last — it is abso- 
 lutelv beyond the wildest bounds of possi- 
 bility that it can last ! After five minutes' 
 talk mother will be at her feet ; I know 
 my mother so well ! N : 1 one of her 
 exquisite ways will be lost upon her, and 
 she will do her very best to win her ! Jim, 
 I ask you — I put it to you quietly and 
 plainly — I know you think I am mad. but 
 I am not — I am speaking quite rationally 
 and coolly — but I ask you— an im- 
 
 partial bystander — do you think that any
 
 158 ALAS/ 
 
 human being, anything made of flesh and 
 blood, could resist her — her when she puts 
 herself out to please — her at her very- 
 best?" 
 
 As Burgoyne is conscious of not being 
 in a position to answer this question with 
 much satisfaction to himself, he leaves it 
 unanswered.
 
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