'To Nice!' said Somerset, rather blankly. 'And I must stay here?'
'Why, of course you must, considering what you have undertaken!' she said, looking with saucy composure into his eyes. 'My uncle's reason for proposing the journey just now is, that he thinks the alterations will make residence here dusty and disagreeable during the spring. The opportunity of going with him is too good a one for us to lose, as I have never been there.'
'I wish I was going to be one of the party!... What do YOU wish about it?'
She shook her head impenetrably. 'A woman may wish some things she does not care to tell!'
'Are you really glad you are going, dearest?--as I MUST call you just once,' said the young man, gazing earnestly into her face, which struck him as looking far too rosy and radiant to be consistent with ever so little regret at leaving him behind.
'I take great interest in foreign trips, especially to the shores of the Mediterranean: and everybody makes a point of getting away when the house is turned out of the window.'
'But you do feel a little sadness, such as I should feel if our positions were reversed?'
'I think you ought not to have asked that so incredulously,' she murmured. 'We can be near each other in spirit, when our bodies are far apart, can we not?' Her tone grew softer and she drew a little closer to his side with a slightly nestling motion, as she went on, 'May I be sure that you will not think unkindly of me when I am absent from your sight, and not begrudge me any little pleasure because you are not there to share it with me?'
'May you! Can you ask it?... As for me, I shall have no pleasure to be begrudged or otherwise. The only pleasure I have is, as you well know, in you. When you are with me, I am happy: when you are away, I take no pleasure in anything.'
'I don't deserve it. I have no right to disturb you so,' she said, very gently. 'But I have given you some pleasure, have I not? A little more pleasure than pain, perhaps?'
'You have, and yet.... But I don't accuse you, dearest. Yes, you have given me pleasure. One truly pleasant time was when we stood together in the summer-house on the evening of the garden-party, and you said you liked me to love you.'
'Yes, it was a pleasant time,' she returned thoughtfully. 'How the rain came down, and formed a gauze between us and the dancers, did it not; and how afraid we were--at least I was--lest anybody should discover us there, and how quickly I ran in after the rain was over!'