"Imogene!" Mrs. Bowen cried out, but quelled herself again.
"Yes," pursued the girl, in the same dreary monotone, "he thinks I couldn"t appreciate him because he was old. He thinks that I cared for his not being handsome! Perhaps--perhaps----" She began to catch her breath in the effort to keep back the sobs that were coming. "Oh, I can"t bear it! I would rather die than let him think it--such a thing as that!" She bent her head aside, and cried upon the two hands with which she clutched the top of her chair.
Mrs. Bowen sat looking at her distractedly. From time to time she seemed to silence a word upon her lips, and in fact she did not speak.
Imogene lifted her head at last, and softly dried her eyes. Then, as she pushed her handkerchief back into the pocket of her robe, "What sort of looking girl was that other one?"
"That other one?"
"Yes; you know what I mean: the one who behaved so badly to him before."
"Imogene!" said Mrs. Bowen severely, "this is nonsense, and I can"t let you go on so. I might pretend not to know what you mean; but I won"t do that; and I tell you that there is no sort of likeness--of comparison----"
"No, no," wailed the girl, "there _is_ none. I feel that. She had nothing to warn her--he hadn"t suffered then; he was young; he was able to bear it--you said it yourself, Mrs. Bowen. But now--_now_, what will he do? He could make fun of that, and not hate her so much, because she didn"t know how much harm she was doing. But I did; and what can he think of me?"
Mrs. Bowen looked across the barrier between them, that kept her from taking Imogene into her arms, and laughing and kissing away her craze, with cold dislike, and only said, "You know whether you"ve really anything to accuse yourself of, Imogene. I can"t and won"t consider Mr.
Colville in the matter; I _didn"t_ consider him in what I said to-day.
And I tell you again that I will not interfere with you in the slightest degree beyond appearances and the responsibility I feel to your mother.
And it"s for you to know your own mind. You are old enough. I will do what you say. It"s for you to be sure that you wish what you say."
"Yes," said Imogene huskily, and she let an interval that was long to them both elapse before she said anything more. "Have I always done what you thought best, Mrs. Bowen?"
"Yes, I have never complained of you."
"Then why can"t you tell me now what you think best?"
"Because there is nothing to be done. It is all over."
"But if it were not, would you tell me?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I--couldn"t."
"Then I take back my promise not to write to Mr. Colville. I am going to ask him to stay."
"Have you made up your mind to that, Imogene?" asked Mrs. Bowen, showing no sign of excitement, except to take a faster hold of her own wrists with the slim hands in which she had caught them.
"Yes."
"You know the position it places you in?"
"What position?"
"Has he offered himself to you?"
"No!" the girl"s face blazed.
"Then, after what"s pa.s.sed, this is the same as offering yourself to him."
Imogene turned white. "I must write to him, unless you forbid me."
"Certainly I shall not forbid you." Mrs. Bowen rose and went to her writing-desk. "But if you have fully made up your mind to this step, and are ready for the consequences, whatever they are----" She stopped, before sitting down, and looked back over her shoulder at Imogene.
"Yes," said the girl, who had also risen.
"Then I will write to Mr. Colville for you, and render the proceeding as little objectionable as possible."
Imogene made no reply. She stood motionless while Mrs. Bowen wrote.
"Is this what you wished?" asked the latter, offering the sheet:----
"Dear Mr. Colville,--I have reasons for wishing to recall my consent to your going away. Will you not come and lunch with us to-morrow, and try to forget everything that has pa.s.sed during a few days?
"Yours very sincerely,
"Evalina Bowen."
"Yes, that will do," gasped Imogene.
Mrs. Bowen rang the bell for the porter, and stood with her back to the girl, waiting for him at the salon door. He came after a delay that sufficiently intimated the lateness of the hour. "This letter must go at once to the Hotel d"Atene," said Mrs. Bowen peremptorily.
"You shall be served," said the porter, with fort.i.tude.
As Mrs. Bowen turned, Imogene ran toward her with clasped hands. "Oh, how merciful--how good----"
Mrs. Bowen shrank back. "Don"t touch me, Imogene, please!"
It was her letter which Colville found on his table and read by the struggling light of his newly acquired candle. Then he sat down and replied to it.
"Dear Mrs. Bowen,--I know that you mean some sort of kindness by me, and I hope you will not think me prompted by any poor resentment in declining to-morrow"s lunch. I am satisfied that it is best for me to go; and I am ashamed not to be gone already. But a ridiculous accident has kept me, and when I came in and found your note I was just going to write and ask your patience with my presence in Florence till Monday morning.
"Yours sincerely, THEODORE COLVILLE."
He took his note down to the porter, who had lain down again in his little booth, but sprang up with a cheerful request to be commanded.
Colville consulted him upon the propriety of sending the note to Palazzo Pinti at once, and the porter, with his head laid in deprecation upon one of his lifted shoulders, owned that it was perhaps the very least little bit in the world late.
"Send it the first thing in the morning, then," said Colville.
Mrs. Bowen received it by the servant who brought her coffee to the room, and she sent it without any word to Imogene. The girl came instantly back with it. She was fully dressed, as if she had been up a long time, and she wore a very plain, dull dress, in which one of her own s.e.x might have read the expression of a potential self-devotion.
"It"s just as I wish it, Mrs. Bowen," she said, in a low key of impa.s.sioned resolution. "_Now_, my conscience is at rest. And you have done this for me, Mrs. Bowen!" She stood timidly with the door in her hand, watching Mrs. Bowen"s slight smile; then, as if at some sign in it, she flew to the bed and kissed her, and so fled out of the room again.
Colville slept late, and awoke with a vague sense of self-reproach, which faded afterward to such poor satisfaction as comes to us from the consciousness of having made the best of a bad business; some pangs of softer regret mixed with this. At first he felt a stupid obligation to keep indoors, and he really did not go out till after lunch. The sunshine had looked cold from his window, and with the bright fire which he found necessary in his room, he fancied a bitterness in the gusts that caught up the dust in the piazza, and blew it against the line of cabs on the other side; but when he got out into the weather he found the breeze mild and the sun warm. The streets were thronged with people, and at all the corners there were groups of cloaked and overcoated talkers, soaking themselves full of the sunshine. The air throbbed, as always, with the sound of bells, but it was a mellower and opener sound than before, and looking at the purple bulk of one of those hills which seem to rest like clouds at the end of each avenue in Florence, Colville saw that it was clear of snow. He was going up through Via Cavour to find Mr. Waters and propose a walk, but he met him before he had got half-way to San Marco.
The old man was at a momentary stand-still, looking up at the Riccardi Palace, and he received Colville with apparent forgetfulness of anything odd in his being still in Florence. "Upon the whole," he said, without preliminary of any sort, as Colville turned and joined him in walking on, "I don"t know any homicide that more distinctly proves the futility of a.s.sa.s.sination as a political measure than that over yonder." He nodded his head sidewise toward the palace as he shuffled actively along at Colville"s elbow.