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 hav............