IN the few weeks that followed it happened that Kate was thrown very much into the society of Lady Caryisfort. It would have been difficult to tell why; and not one of the party could have explained how it was that Ombra and her mother were always engaged, or tired, or had headaches, when Lady Caryisfort called on her way to the Cascine. But so it happened; and gradually Kate passed into the hands of her new friend. Often she remained with her after the drive, and went with her to the theatre, or spent the evening with her at home. And though Mrs. Anderson sometimes made a melancholy little speech on the subject, and half upbraided Kate for this transference of her society, she never made any real effort to withstand it, but really encouraged—as her niece felt somewhat bitterly—a friendship which removed Kate out of the way, as she had resolved not to take her into her confidence. Kate was but half happy in this strange severance, but it was better to be away, better to be smiled upon and caressed by Lady Caryisfort, than to feel herself one too many, to be left out of the innermost circle at home.
And the more she went to the Via Maggio the more she saw of Count Buoncompagni. Had it been in any other house than her own that Kate had encountered this young, agreeable, attractive, honest fortune-hunter, Lady Caryisfort would have been excited and indignant. But he was an habitué of her own house, an old friend of her own, as well as the relation of her dearest and most intimate Italian friend; and she was too indolent to disturb her own mind and habits by the effort of sending him away.
‘Besides, why should I? Kate cannot have some one to go before her to sweep all the young men out of her path,’ she said, with some amusement at her own idea. ‘She must take her chance, like everybody else; and he must take his chance. ‘By way of setting her conscience at rest, however, she warned them both. She said to Count Antonio seriously,
‘Now, don’t flirt with my young lady. You know I dislike it. And I am responsible for her safety when she is with me; and you must not put any nonsense into her head.’
‘Milady’s commands are my law,’ said Antonio, meaning to take his own way. And Lady Caryisfort said lightly to Kate,
‘Don’t you forget, dear, that all Italians are fortune-hunters. Never believe a word these young men say. They don’t even pretend to think it disgraceful, as we do. And, unfortunately, it is known that you are an heiress.’
All this did not make Kate happier. It undermined gradually her confidence in the world, which had seemed all so smiling and so kind. She had thought herself loved, where now she found herself thrust aside. She had thought herself an important member of a party which it was evident could go on without her; and the girl was humbled and downcast. And now to be warned not to believe what was said to her, to consider all those pleasant faces as smiling, not upon herself, but upon her fortune. It would be difficult to describe in words how depressed she was. And Antonio Buoncompagni, though she had been thus warned against him, had an honest face. He looked like the hero in an opera, and sang like the same; but there was an honest simplicity about his face, which made it very hard to doubt him. He was a child still in his innocent ways, though he was a man of the world, and doubtless knew a great deal of both good and evil which was unknown to Kate. But she saw the simplicity, and she was pleased, in spite of herself, with the constant devotion he showed to her. How could she but like it? She was wounded by other people’s neglect, and he was so kind, so amiable, so good to her. She was pleased to see him by her side, glad to feel that he preferred to come; not like those who had known her all her life, and yet did not care.
So everything went on merrily, and already old Countess Buoncompagni had heard of it at the villa, and meditated a visit to Florence, to see the English girl who was going to build up the old house once more. And even, which was most wonderful of all, a sense that she might have to do it—that it was her fate, not to be struggled against—an idea half pleasant, half terrible, sometimes stole across the mind even of Kate herself.
Lady Caryisfort received more or less every evening, but most on the Thursdays; and one of these evenings the subject was brought before her too distinctly to be avoided. That great, warm-coloured, dark drawing-room, with the frescoes, looked better when it was full of people than when its mistress was alone in it. There were quantities of wax lights everywhere, enough to neutralise the ruby gloom of the velvet curtains, and light up the brown depths of the old frescoes, with the faces looking out of them. All the mirrors, as well as the room itself, were full of people in pretty dresses, seated in groups or standing about, and there were flowers and lights everywhere. Lady Caryisfort herself inhabited her favourite sofa near the fire, underneath that great fresco; she had a little group round her as she always had; but something rather unusual had occurred. Among all the young men who worshipped and served this pretty woman, who treated them as boys and professed not to want them—and the gay young women who were her companions—there had penetrated one British matron, with that devotion to her duties, that absolute virtuousness and inclination to point out their duty to others, which sometimes distinguishes that excellent member of society. She had been putting Lady Caryisfort through a catechism of all her doings and intentions, and then, as ill-luck would have it, her eye lighted upon pretty Kate, with the young man who was the very Count of romance—the primo tenore, the jeune premier, whom anyone could identify at a glance.
‘Ah! I suppose I shall soon have to congratulate you on that,’ she said, nodding her head with airy grace in the direction where Kate was, ‘for you are a relation of Miss Courtenay’s, are you not? I hope the match will be as satisfactory for the lady as for the gentleman—as it must be indeed, when it is of your making, dear Lady Caryisfort. What a handsome couple they will make!’
‘Of my making!’ said Lady Caryisfort. And the crisis was so terrible that there was a pause all round her—a pause such as might occur in Olympus before Jove threw one of his thunderbolts. All who knew her, knew what a horrible accusation this was. ‘A match—of my making!’ she repeated. ‘Don’t you know that I discourage marriages among my friends? I—to make a match!—who hate them, and the very name of them!’
‘Oh, dear Lady Caryisfort, you are so amusing! To hear you say that, with such a serious look! What an actress you would have made!’
‘Actress,’ said Lady Caryisfort, ‘and match-maker! You do not compliment me; but I am not acting just now. I never made a match in my life—I hate to see matches made! I discourage them; I throw cold water upon them. Matches!—if there is a thing in the world I hate——’
‘But I mean a nice match, of course; a thing most desirable; a marriage such as those, you know,’ cried the British matron, with enthusiasm, ‘which are made in heaven.’
‘I don’t believe in anything of the kind,’ said the mistress of the house, who liked to shock her audience now and then.
‘Oh, dear Lady Caryisfort!’
‘I do not believe in anything of the kind. Marriages are the greatest nuisance possible; they have to be, I suppose, but I hate them; they break up society; they disturb family peace; they spoil friendship; they make four people wretched for every two whom they pretend to make happy!’
‘Lady Caryisfort—Lady Caryisfort! with all these young people about!’
‘I don’t think what I say will harm the young people; and, besides, everybody knows my feelings on this subject. I a match-maker! Why, it is my horror! I begin to vituperate in spite of myself. I—throw away my friends in such a foolish way! The moment you marry you are lost—I mean to me. Do you hear, young people? Such of you as were married before I knew you I can put up with. I have accepted you in the lump, as it were. But, good heavens! fancy me depriving myself of that child who comes and puts her pretty arms round my neck and tells me all her secrets! If she were married to-morrow she would be prim and dignified, and probably would tell me that her John did not quite approve of me. No, no; I will have none of that.’
‘Lady Caryisfort is always sublime on this subject,’ said one of her court.’
‘Am I sublime? I say what I feel,’ said Lady Caryisfort, languidly leaning back upon her cushions. ‘When I give my benediction to a marriage, I say, at the same time, bon jour. I don’t want to be surrounded by my equals. I like inferiors—beings who look up to me; so please let nobody call me a match-maker. It is the only opprobrious epithet which I will not put up with. Call me anything else—I can bear it—but not that.’
‘Ah! dear Lady Caryisfort, are not you doing wrong to a woman’s best instincts?’ said her inquisitor, shaking her head with a sigh.
Lady Caryisfort shrugged her shoulders.
‘Will some one please to give me my shawl?’ she said; and half-a-dozen pair of hands immediately snatched at it. ‘Thanks; don’t marry—I like you best as you are,’ she said, with a careless little nod at her subjects before she turned round to plunge into a conversation with Countess Strozzi, who did not understand English. The British matron was deeply scandalised; she poured out her indignant feelings to two or three people in the room before she withdrew, and next day she wrote a letter to a friend in England, asking if it was known that the great heiress, Miss Courtenay, was on the eve of being married to an Italian nobleman—‘or, at least, he calls himself Count Somebody; though of course, one never believes what these foreigners tell one,’ she wrote. ‘If you should happen to meet Mr. Courtenay, you might just mention this, in case he should not know how far things had gone.’
Thus, all unawares, the cloud arose in the sky, and the storm prepared itself. Christmas had passed, and Count Antonio felt that it was almost time to speak. He was very grateful to Providence and the saints for the success which had attended him. Perhaps, after all, his mother’s prayers in the little church at the villa, and those perpetual novenas with which she had somewhat vexed his young soul when she was with him in Florence, had been instrumental in bringing about this result. The Madonna, who, good to everyone, is always specially good to an only son, had no doubt led into his very arms this wealth, which would save the house. So Antonio thought quite devoutly, without an idea in his good-natured soul that there was anything ignoble in his pursuit or in his gratitude. Without money he dared not have dreamed of marrying, and Kate was not one whom he could have ventured to fall in love with apart from the necessity of marriage. But he admired her immensely, and was grateful to her for all the advantages she was going to bring him. He even felt himself in love with her, when she looked up at him with her English radiance of bloom, singling him out in the midst of so many who would have been proud of her favour. There was not a thought in the young Italian’s heart which was not good, and tender, and pleasant towards his heiress. He would have been most kind and affectionate to her had she married him, and would have loved her honestly had she chosen to love him; but he was not impassioned—and at the present moment it was to Antonio a most satisfactory, delightful, successful enterprise, which could bring nothing but good, rather than a love-suit, in which his heart and happiness were engaged.
However, things were settling steadily this way when Christmas came. Already Count Antonio had made up his mind to begin operations by speaking to Lady Caryisfort on the subject, and Kate had felt vaguely that she would have to choose between the position of a great lady in England on her own land and that of a great lady in beautiful Florence. The last was not without its attractions, and Antonio was so kind, while other people were so indifferent. Poor Kate was not as happy as she looked. More and more it became apparent to her that something was going on at home which was carefully concealed from her. They even made new friends, whom she did not know—one of whom, in particular, a young clergyman, a friend of the Berties, stared at her now and then from a corner of the drawing-room in the Lung-Arno, with a curiosity which she fully shared. ‘Oh! he is a friend of Mr. Hardwick’s; he is here only for a week or two; he is going on to Rome for the Carnival,’ Mrs. Anderson said, without apparently perceiving what an evidence Kate’s ignorance was of the way in which their lives had fallen apart. And the Berties now were continually in the house. They seemed to have no other engagements, except when, now and then, they went to the opera with the ladies. Sometimes Kate thought one or the other of them showed signs of uneasiness, but Ombra was bright as the day, and Mrs. Anderson made no explanation. And how could she, the youngest of the household, the one who was not wanted—how could she interfere or say anything? The wound worked deeper and deeper, and a certain weariness and distrust crept over Kate. Oh, for some change!—even Antonio’s proposal, which was coming. For as it was only her imagination and her vanity, not her heart, which were interested, Kate saw with perfect clear-sightedness that the proposal was on its way.
But before it arrived—before any change had come to the state of affairs in the Lung-Arno—one evening, when Kate was at home, and, as usual, abstracted over a book in a corner; when the Berties were in full possession, one bending over Ombra at the piano, one talking earnestly to her mother, Francesca suddenly threw the door open, with a vehemence quite unusual to her, and without a word of warning—without even the announcement of his name to put them on their guard—Mr. Courtenay walked into the room.