University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.

Paul's mother's letter had lain open on the table
while he was dressing for the soirée at the English
embassy, and it was with somewhat a complex feeling
that he now gave himself up to it for five minutes
before going out for the evening. In any newly opened
letter from her hand, there was the presence of a guardian
spirit which he had hesitated to confront with his promise
of adventure of the evening before—delaying therefore
the reading of this one till he should have returned
from the visit with the princess to the mysterious artist
—but it was not altogether as a delinquent trying to
make amends for a neglect, that he now re-conned the
already well-studied syllables. There was another very

important ministration, for which the spirit of his mother's
letters had grown, insensibly, with his European experiences,
to be the reliance. Though a general human
want for which it thus furnished the supply, it was so
far American that it was one to which the atmosphere
of monarchical countries for the first time made him
sensitive.

The more sacred world than society—the something
of his own to which all the exterior of his present life
should be secondary—was the need which he found
supplied in those letters. He read his thoughts back
into his mother's presence, before going out, to be reassured
of what, more precious than the errand out of
doors, he had to come home to. The association so
constantly with those who had rank, station or resources,
like nests to which they could at any moment return—
to whom society was but the air when idly on the wing—
had awakened in Paul's mind, gradually, a dread of the
heart-sinking sense of vagrancy. To be everywhere the
stranger—only recognised as passing, and with no value
on which, at will, to stop, and within which to entrench
privacy, strengthen resources and suffice for oneself—
this seemed to him the phantom of dread with which
low spirits, for a traveller so nameless as himself, stood
ever ominously prepared. There could be no smoother
sailing, it was true, than he had everywhere found it,

and all, at present, seemed a summer sea—but he must
have chart and compass for voyage and venture of his
own, if need were, or he was adrift upon European society
as upon a plank in mid-ocean.

Bound, for the evening, to a scene where his habitual
welcome was particularly friendly and familiar, there was
still to be an encounter with eyes akin to the first that
had ever looked coldly on him (an introduction to an
Ashly)—and it was perhaps with the vague shadow of
association with this name that Paul lingered more sensitively
than usual over what was dearest to him. He
once more turned to make certain upon what better
treasure, than his errand without, he was to lock the
door of memory within. Thus ran the concluding pages
with which his mother wound up her gossip of home
matters:

It was with his inner eyes thus brightened—his consciousness
of a life, for which another sky furnished him with the
light and air, renewed and made familiar—that Paul drew
on his gloves and strolled slowly out to his evening's
engagement. The stars seemed looking deep down betwixt
the overhanging eaves into the dim-lit streets of Florence,
and the passers-by were few; the rattle of now and then a
rapidly driven carriage over the smooth pavement being
almost the only sound that broke upon the night air in
that quarter of palaces; but there was unseen company for
at least one lingering foot-passenger along the dark streets.
Paul turned from one of the narrower cross thoroughfares,
and entered upon the glare of the porch-way, where the
equipages were dashing in and out with the guests for the
festivities at the English Embassy, not feeling that, in his
own solitary walk hither, he had loitered through the
hushed shadows altogether alone.

Dancing was not yet commenced; but the band were
playing waltzes, and the promenading couples were beginning
to take their range through the formidable length of
the ball-room. The guests of the small dinner-party which

had preceded the general reception, were just from table;
and one of the two or three strangers who were gathered
immediately around the ambassador, Paul supposed must
be Mr. Ashly. After making his bow to the lady of the
house, he made the tea-tray an errand for approaching this
group of gentlemen; and it needed but half a look for his
well-prepared eye to select the face which should be the
brother's of her whom he had such occasion to remember!
There was the same cold grey eye, and the same passionless
and imperturbable pallor of complexion, with the curl
of the lip, even in repose objective and contemptuous. In
figure, Mr. Ashly was slight and tall, well dressed, and of a
distinguished look quite unmistakable. Spite of the ungenial
character given to his first presence by the unconscious
superciliousness that was evidently habitual to him,
a second look at his thorough-bred outline and maintien
would scarce fail to find him very intellectually handsome.

After shaking hands with the ambassador, Paul fell into
conversation with an acquaintance who was one of the
group, and, seeing Tetherly occupied at a little distance
with a lady, he thought he would thus wait his time till
that friend should come along, as proposed, for the incidental
introduction. He observed directly, however, that
Mr. Ashly was taken aside by Sir Cummit Strong, who had
been one of the dinner-guests at the Embassy, and, if he
was not very much mistaken, he was himself pointed out

to the stranger immediately after. Of what interest he
could be to either of them, thus far, he could not understand,
though he had once or twice of late chanced to be
the object of a preference by his countrywoman, Miss Firkin,
to the temporary discomfiture of Sir Cummit; and
Blivins had mentioned to him that Miss 'Phia's English
admirer and his female ally, Lady Highsnake, spoke not
very lovingly of the attaché in his absence. Even if the
baronet attributed his unsuccessfulness of suit to Paul's
hindrance, however, there could be no sufficient reason for
calling a stranger's attention so directly to the offender.

By a movement among the company, a moment after,
the gentlemen in that quarter of the room were drawn
into a circle around the ambassadress, and, at the same
instant that Paul discovered himself in close neighborhood
to the stranger, her frank ladyship chose to remove the
ceremony from between them by the exercise of her privilege
as hostess.

“Mr. Ashly, Mr. Fane,” and, for the moment, it appeared
as if those chance-uttered words had removed the only
obstacle to the fulfilment of the commands of the lovely
Sybil.

But there was a sudden check to the impulse with which
Paul was about to follow up the first phrase of courtesy
with an allusion to their mutual acquaintance, and her commission
for the morrow evening. To the smile on his own

lip there was no answer! With the Englishman's recovery
of position from the bow which civility required, there was
an evident limit to the introduction. It was the Ashly
look again which Paul felt in the passive-lidded turn of
that reluctant eye upon him! And, by a just perceptible
compression of the supercilious lip, the expression was
unmistakably confirmed.

One of the reigning belles of the court of Florence fell
into the line of Paul's look at the moment, and to give her
an arm for a waltz was the sudden diversion of purpose
with which he covered the embarrassment of the smile so
suddenly checked; and, as he glided away to the measure
of the enchanting music, leaving Mr. Ashly with an apparent
recognition of their introduction which seemed only
more careless than his own, he found time to struggle with
the phantom that so strangely had re-found to re-haunt
him.

What could be the barb in the repetition, now, of that
slight so trifling? Why should that sister's unintentional
indifference be turned in the wound like a poisoned arrow
by the brother's still more unimportant coldness in a civility?
How, was Miss Ashly not forgotten? Why should
the brother or his acquaintance outlast, to-night, in Paul's
mind, a single turn of the waltz with that titled beauty
upon his arm? A whole court present, with whose throngs

of rank and talent to be familiarly friendly, and yet all
made inscrutably valueless by the indifference of one
undistinguished stranger!

The waltz over, and the conspicuous countess and her
bouquet taking breath together at the head of the room,
Paul took advantage of the approach of an admirer or
two, and made his escape from the glaring rooms to the
fresh air of one of the balconies over the garden. He was
joined here by Tetherly, after a few minutes.

“This is diplomatic air, my dear fellow,” he said; “but
we are not all born to it! At least my proposed dodge in
your service has been too slow; for, remembering your
American scruple about introductions, and finding occasion
to practise a little ambassadorial reserve in the exercise of
your commission, I was just coming to you for further
instructions when I saw you introduced without me.”

“Then, perhaps the reason for your reserve will explain
the manner of the gentleman, said Paul, “for his evident
unwillingness to accept of her ladyship's courtesy prevented
my even speaking to him of Miss Paleford—the only use
I had for his acquaintance, you know.”

“Not too fast, my boy!—though I think the lady's
errand must, in any case, go unperformed. You could not
well offer Mr. Ashly the civility of a drive with his present
impression of you. But let us distribute the blame a little
more justly than you are likely to do!”

“Among Yankees, generally, do you mean?” asked Paul,
with a smile.

“Why, your belonging across the water made the matter
a little easier no doubt,” said Tetherly, with a deprecating
inclination of his head, “and my own remark at the
dinner-table, which proved suggestive of what I wish to
enlighten you upon, was complimentary enough to your
people to provoke a rejoinder.”

“Thanks, for your championship,” said Paul; “but of
what shape was Mr. Ashly's rejoinder.”

“Now we come to your mistake, my dear Fane! The
rejoinder was from another person, and its sentiment was
not agreed in by Mr. Ashly—but though he could dissent
from the speaker on the general question, as he did very
quietly and decidedly as to American qualities, he could
say nothing in reply to Sir Cummit's personal disparagement
of you.”

“What, abused by the stiff old baronet?” asked Paul,
with a laugh.

“Then you are quite sure it's of no consequence?” said
Tetherly, a little inquisitively.

“As far as his own opinion goes, not the least in the
world—his own nor the opinion of the ninety-nine in a
hundred who are like him. But,” added Paul, after a
moment, “even such a dull abuser may be listened to by
refined ears. What said he to Mr. Ashly?”

“May I own now, that your distinction is a little inexplicable,”
asked Tetherly, “though I confess that its discovery
has relieved somewhat of the embarrassment of
my feeling—the opinion of so passing a stranger as this
simple Mr. Ashly of such interest to you, while that of the
baronet, who is so much more consequential a personage
hereabouts, is of no importance at all?”

Paul balanced for an instant the unconfessed secret that
gave the eye of that passing stranger its caprice of power,
but despairing of making it understood, or, more probably,
dreading the self-ridicule that might follow his bringing it
from the shadow of his own mind fairly to the light, he
let the remark pass in silence.

Tetherly went on to explain the conversation at the
dinner-table. Miss Paleford's exceeding beauty had come
under discussion, and, by way of preparing the ground for
introduction to Paul and the coming excursion, he had
alluded to him as a friend of Colonel Paleford's, but in a
general mention of the Americans at Florence. The allusion
had been quite enough to draw down a torrent of
abuse from Sir Cummit. He thought little of Americans
in Europe, generally; but made out Colonel Paleford's
friend, more particularly to be a humbug—“a color-grinder
to a portrait-painter by the name of Blivins, travelling about
with a diplomatic title on his passport, pretending, for the
present, to make his addresses to the rich Miss Firkin!”

Tetherly had waited for the stormy baronet to give him
an opportunity to take his friend's part; but at the height
of his unaccountable tirade, he had observed the ambasador
rising from the table; and so Mr. Ashly had gone into the
drawing-room with rather one-sided impressions of Mr.
Fane's desirableness as an acquaintance.

“I am sorry I do not look a refutation of the baronet's
slanders or disparagements,” said Paul, still writhing under
the infliction of the slight by that eye of mysterious power;
“but there is at least an error or so, that may be corrected,
and about this I will call on you in the morning. Meantime,
my dear Tetherly, here are bright eyes looking for
you, I can see, and so you shall say good night to things
as mirth-killing as my troubles. Allons!”

And, taking his friend's arm into the drawing room,
Paul left him with a lady of their mutual acquaintance,
and made his own way back to his own busy thought-world
at home.