Chapter II.

THE morning came, and a very lovely morning it was, as bright and almost as warm as summer, one of those glimpses of real spring which come to us only by days at a time. Aunt Milly came almost before we had finished breakfast. I dare say she is accustomed to early hours; but it was evidently strong anxiety and excitement that had brought her out so soon to-day. I had told Lizzie she was coming, and Lizzie, either with some perception of the real nature of her visit, which I could not in any way account for, or with natural Scotch jealousy and reluctance to satisfy the curiosity of strangers as to our relationship, kept on the watch after she had given baby into my charge, and got her triumphantly into the house without any intervention on the part of Domenico. Aunt Milly sank into a chair, very breathless and agitated. It was some time before she could even notice little Harry. To see her so made me more and more aware how serious this business, whatever it was, must be.

“But I am too early, I suppose?” she said with a little gasp.

Harry thought it was rather too early, unless he were to tell Mr. Luigi plainly what he was wanted for, which she would not permit him to do. It was a very uncomfortable interval. She sat silent, evidently with her whole mind bent upon the approaching interview. We, neither knowing the subject of it, nor what her anxiety was, had nothing to say, and I was very glad when Harry went downstairs to find the Italian. Then Aunt Milly made a hurried communication to me when we were alone, which certainly did not explain anything, but which still she evidently felt to be taking me into her confidence.

“My dear, Sarah knows something about him,” said Aunt Milly; “somehow or other Sarah knows that he has a claim upon us. When she heard of the inquiries he was making, she was in a state of desperation—used to drive out with the carriage blinds down, poor soul, and kept watching all day long, so wretched and anxious that it would have broken{262} your heart. But how it all is, and how about this Countess, and his being named Luigi, and his claim upon the estate, and her knowing him—though, so far as I can judge, he could be no more than born when she came home—Hark! was that somebody coming upstairs?”

It was only some of the people of the house moving about. Aunt Milly gave a sigh of relief. “My dear, I’m more and more anxious since I’ve found you, to know the worst,” she said. “It is as great a mystery to you as to your baby, how he can have any connection with us. Dear, dear! to think of a quiet family, and such a family as the Mortimers, plunged all at once into some mystery! it is enough to break one’s heart;—but then, you see, Sarah was so long abroad.”

“Was she long abroad?” said I, with a little cry. All at once, and in spite of myself, my old fancy about that old Miss Mortimer, whom I imagined living in my grandfather’s house, came back to my mind. The great beauty whom my good Mrs. Saltoun had seen abroad—how strange if this should be her after all! Somehow my old imaginations had looked so true at the time, that I seemed to remember them as if they were matters of fact and not of fancy. I looked up, quite with a consciousness that I knew something about it, in Aunt Milly’s face.

“What do you know about her?” cried Aunt Milly, rising up quite erect and rigid out of her chair. Her excitement was extreme. She had evidently gone beyond the point at which she could be surprised to find any stranger throwing light upon her mystery. But at that moment those steps for which we had been listening did ascend the stairs. We could hear them talking as they approached, the Italian with his accent and rather solemn dictionary English, and Harry’s voice that sounded so easy in comparison. Aunt Milly sank back again into her chair. She grasped the arms of it to support herself, and gave me a strange half-terrified, half-courageous look. In another moment they had entered the room.

Mr. Luigi came in without any idea, I dare say, of the anxiety with which we awaited him; but he had not been a minute in the room when his quick eye caught Aunt Milly, though she had drawn back with an involuntary movement of withdrawal from the crisis she had herself brought on. I could read in his face, the instant he saw her, that he divined the little contrivance by which he had been brought here. He stood facing her after he had paid his respects to me, and took no notice of the chair Harry offered him. As for Harry and I, not knowing whether they really knew each other, or whether{263} they ought to be named to each other, or what to do, we stood very uncomfortable and embarrassed behind. I said “Miss Mortimer,” instinctively, to lessen the embarrassment if I could. I don’t believe he heard me. He knew Miss Mortimer very well, however it was.

And it was he who was the first to break the silence. He made a kind of reverence to her, more than a bow, like some sort of old-fashioned filial demonstration. “Madame has something to say to me?” he asked, with an anxiety in his face almost equal to her own.

“Yes,” cried Aunt Milly, “I—I have something to say to you. Sit down, and let me get breath.”

He sat down, and so did we. To see her struggling to overcome the great tremor of excitement she had fallen into, and we all waiting in silence for her words, must have been a very strange scene. It was the merest wonder and curiosity, of course, with Harry and me; but I remember noticing even at that moment that Mr. Luigi was not surprised. He evidently knew something to account for her agitation. He sat looking at her, bending towards her with visible expectation of something. It was no mystery to him.

“Sir—young man,” cried Aunt Milly, with a gasp, “I do not know you; you are a stranger, a foreigner; you have nothing to do with this place. What, in the name of heaven, is it that you have to do with mine or me?”

Mr. Luigi’s countenance fell. He was bitterly disappointed; it was evident in his face. He drew a long breath and clasped his hands together, half in resignation, half appealing against some hard fate. “Ah!” he said, “I did hope otherwise—is it, indeed, indeed, that you know not me?”

Aunt Milly gave a cry half of terror. “I recognise your voice,” she said. “I see gleams in your face of faces I know. I am going out of my wits with bewilderment and trouble; but as sure as you are there before me, I know no more who you are than does the child who cannot speak.”

Mr. Luigi made no reply for some minutes. Then he made some exclamations in Italian, scarcely knowing, I am sure, what he was saying. Then he remembered himself. “Thing most strange! thing most terrible!” cried the young man; “not even now!—not even now!” and he looked round to us with such distress and amazement in his face, and with such an involuntary call for our sympathy, though we knew nothing about it, that his look went to my heart. Aunt Milly saw it, and was confounded by it. His genuine wonder and strange{264} grieved consciousness that she ought to have known this secret, whatever it was, stopped her questions upon her lips. She sat leaning forward looking at him, struck dumb by his looks. I was so excited by the evident reserve on both sides, which implied the existence of a third person whom neither would name, that I burst into it, on the spur of the moment, without thinking whether what I said was sensible or foolish. “Who?” I cried, “who is the other person that knows?”

Both of them started violently; then their eyes met in a strange look of intelligence. Aunt Milly fell back in her chair trembling dreadfully, trembling so much that her teeth chattered. Mr. Luigi rose. “I am at Madame’s disposition,” he said softly; “but what can I say? It is better I be gone while I do not harm Madame, and make her ill. Pardon! it is not I who am to blame!”

Saying so, he took Aunt Milly’s hand, kissed it, and turned to the door. She called him back faintly. “Stop, I have not asked you rightly,” said poor Aunt Milly. “Could not you tell me, without minding anybody else? Are you—are you?—oh! who are you? I do beseech you tell me. If wrong is done you, I have no hand in it. What is there to prevent you telling me?”

“Ah, pardon. I know my duty,” said the young man. “If she will reject me—then! but it is yet too early. I wait—I expect—she has not yet said it to me.”

Aunt Milly gathered herself up gradually, with a strange fluttered look in her eyes. “Reject you! God bless us! it is some mistake, after all. Do you know who it is you are speaking of? Do you know if it is my sister Sarah? She is my elder sister, ten years older than me,—old enough to be your mother—is it she? or, oh, God help us! is it a mistake?”

Mr. Luigi turned towards me for a moment, with a face melted out of all reserve, into such affectionateness and emotion as I scarcely ever saw on a man’s face. When she named her sister’s age, he said, “Ah!” with a tone as if her words went to his heart. But that was all. He shook his head. He said, “No more, no more,” and went slowly but steadily away. It was no mistake. What she said conveyed no information to him. He knew that Sarah’s age and all about her, better than her sister did, or I was mistaken. What he said, and still more what he looked, brought a strong sudden impression to my mind. I don’t know yet how I can be right—if I am right it is the{265} strangest thing in the world; but I know it darted into my head that morning when Luigi’s face melted out so strongly, and that cry which explained nothing came from his heart.

In the meantime, however, poor Aunt Milly sat wringing her hands and more troubled than ever, repeating to herself bits of the conversation which had just passed, and bits of other conversations which we knew nothing about. Harry and I, a little uncomfortable, still tried to occupy ourselves so that we should not hear anything she did not want us to hear; but we did not wish to leave her either. At last Harry went out altogether and left her alone with me, and by degrees she calmed down. I do not wonder she was painfully excited. There could be little doubt some strange, unnatural secret was concealed in her house.

“But you heard him say reject,” said Aunt Milly,—“if she rejected him—do you feel quite sure he understood my last question? Not knowing a language very well makes a wonderful difference; and what if he supposed my sister a young woman, Milly? When I began to be troubled about this business, I couldn’t but think that it was some old lover Sarah was afraid of meeting, forgetting the lapse of time. She was a great beauty once, you know. How do you suppose, now, an old woman could reject a young man?”

“But there are other meanings of the word than as it is between young women and young men,” said I; “he might mean disown.”

“He might mean disown,” repeated Aunt Milly slowly,—“disown; but, dear, dear child,” she cried, immediately throwing off her first puzzled hypothesis, and falling back at once into the real subject of her trouble, “what can he be to Sarah that she could disown him? Before you can disown a person he must belong to you. How could Mr. Luigi belong to my sister? but, to be sure, it is folly to put such questions to you that know nothing about it. Milly, dear, I’ll have to go home.”

“I am very, very sorry you are going home disappointed,” said I.

“Yes,” said Aunt Milly, with a great sigh, “it is hard to think one’s somehow involved in doing wrong, my dear; it’s hard to live in the house with your nearest friend, and not to know any more of her than if she were a stranger. What was I saying? I never said so much to any creature before. I take you as if you belonged to me, though you scarcely know me yet, Milly. I’d like you to settle to come out as soon as{266} possible, dear. I’d like you to see Sarah, and tell me what you think. Perhaps—there is no telling—she might say something to you.”

“But will she be pleased to know about us?” said I.

“It was her desire to seek for you,” said Aunt Milly. “She thought of that, somehow, just before this trouble came on. Sometimes it has come into my mind, that she thought if she found your father, he would have protected her somehow. I can’t tell: it is all a great mystery to me.”

And so she went away after a while, looking very sorrowful; but came back to tell me to put my bonnet on and come with her to Mr. Cresswell’s, who was to drive her home. On our way there I suddenly felt her grasp my arm and point forward a little way before us, where Mr. Luigi was walking slowly along the road by Sara Cresswell’s side. Aunt Milly came almost to a dead stop, looking at them. They were not arm-in-arm, nor did they look as if they had met on purpose. I dare say it was only by accident. Sara, as usual, was dressed in a great velvet jacket, much larger and wider than the one she wore indoors, and held her little head high, as if she quite meant to impress an idea of her dignity upon the Italian, who had to stoop down a long way, and perhaps did stoop down more than Aunt Milly and I saw to be exactly necessary. They went the length of the street together, quite unconscious of the critics behind them, and then separated, Mr. Luigi marching off at a very brisk pace, and Sara continuing her way home. We came up to her just as she reached her own door. She was certainly a very pretty creature, and looked so fresh and blooming in the morning air that I could not have scolded her a great deal, though I own I had a very good mind to do my best in that way, while we were walking behind. The moment she saw us she took guilt to herself. Her face glowed into the most overpowering blush, and the little parasol in her hand fell out of her trembling fingers. But, of course, her spirit did not forsake her. She was not the person to yield to any such emergency.

“We have been walking after you for a long time,” said dear Aunt Milly, in a voice which I have no doubt she supposed to be severe. “I should have called you to wait for us, had I not seen you were otherwise engaged.”

“Oh! then you saw Mr. Luigi, godmamma?” said Sara, quite innocently. “He says he thinks he has found out where the Countess Sermoneta is.”

“The Countess Sermoneta!—oh, child, child, how can you{267} speak so to me?” cried Aunt Milly. “I don’t believe there is any such person in the world. I believe he only makes a fuss about a name, no one ever heard of, to cover his real designs, whatever they may be.”

“Godmamma!” cried Sara, with a flash of fury; “perhaps it will be better to come indoors,” cried the little wicked creature (as Aunt Milly calls her); “nobody, that I ever heard of, took away people’s characters in the open street.”

Aunt Milly went in quickly, shaking her head and deeply troubled. The renewal of this subject swept Sara’s enormity out of her head. We followed, Sara bidding me precede her with a sort of affronted grandeur, which, I confess, was a little amusing to me. When we came into the dining-room, where Aunt Milly went first, the little girl confronted us both, very ready to answer anything we had to say, and confute us to our faces. But much to Sara’s surprise, and perhaps annoyance, Aunt Milly did not say a word on the subject. She shook her head again more energetically than ever. She was so much shaken on this one subject, that other matters evidently glided out of her mind, whenever she was recalled to this.

“No, no! depend upon it there’s no Countess Sermoneta. I believed in it at first, naturally, as everybody else did. It may be a lady, but it isn’t an Italian lady. No, no,” said Aunt Milly, mournfully; “he knows better. He said nothing, you may be sure, about her to me.”

At this moment Mr. Cresswell entered the room, and a little after the brougham came to the door. There was nothing more said on the subject. Sara saw them drive away, with a flutter of fear, I could see; but she need not have been afraid. Aunt Milly had returned into the consideration of her own mystery, which swallowed up Sara’s. I do not think, for my own part, that I had very Christian feelings towards Mr. Luigi as I went home.{