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CHAPTER IV

I remained with Mrs. Ambient, but as a servant had brought out a couple of chairs I wasn’t obliged to seat myself beside her. Our conversation failed of ease, and I, for my part, felt there would be a shade of hypocrisy in my now trying to make myself agreeable to the partner of my friend’s existence. I didn’t dislike her–I rather admired her; but I was aware that I differed from her inexpressibly. Then I suspected, what I afterwards definitely knew and have already intimated, that the poor lady felt small taste for her husband’s so undisguised disciple; and this of course was not encouraging. She thought me an obtrusive and designing, even perhaps a depraved, young man whom a perverse Providence had dropped upon their quiet lawn to flatter his worst tendencies. She did me the honour to say to Miss Ambient, who repeated the speech, that she didn’t know when she had seen their companion take such a fancy to a visitor; and she measured apparently my evil influence by Mark’s appreciation of my society. I had a consciousness, not oppressive but quite sufficient, of all this; though I must say that if it chilled my flow of small-talk it yet didn’t prevent my thinking the beautiful mother and beautiful child, interlaced there against their background of roses, a picture such as I doubtless shouldn’t soon see again. I was free, I supposed, to go into the house and write letters, to sit in the drawing-room, to repair to my own apartment and take a nap; but the only use I made of my freedom was to linger still in my chair and say to myself that the light hand of Sir Joshua might have painted Mark Ambient’s wife and son. I found myself looking perpetually at the latter small mortal, who looked constantly back at me, and that was enough to detain me. With these vaguely-amused eyes he smiled, and I felt it an absolute impossibility to abandon a child with such an expression. His attention never strayed; it attached itself to my face as if among all the small incipient things of his nature throbbed a desire to say something to me. If I could have taken him on my own knee he perhaps would have managed to say it; but it would have been a critical matter to ask his mother to give him up, and it has remained a constant regret for me that on that strange Sunday afternoon I didn’t even for a moment hold Dolcino in my arms. He had said he felt remarkably well and was especially happy; but though peace may have been with him as he pillowed his charming head on his mother’s breast, dropping his little crimson silk legs from her lap, I somehow didn’t think security was. He made no attempt to walk about; he was content to swing his legs softly and strike one as languid and angelic.

Mark returned to us with his sister; and Miss Ambient, repeating her mention of the claims of her correspondence, passed into the house. Mark came and stood in front of his wife, looking down at the child, who immediately took hold of his hand and kept it while he stayed. “I think Mackintosh ought to see him,” he said; “I think I’ll walk over and fetch him.”

“That’s Gwendolen’s idea, I suppose,” Mrs. Ambient replied very sweetly.

“It’s not such an out-of-the-way idea when one’s child’s ill,” he returned.

“I’m not ill, papa; I’m much better now,” sounded in the boy’s silver pipe.

“Is that the truth, or are you only saying it to be agreeable? You’ve a great idea of being agreeable, you know.”

The child seemed to meditate on this distinction, this imputation, for a moment; then his exaggerated eyes, which had wandered, caught my own as I watched him. “Do YOU think me agreeable?” he inquired with the candour of his age and with a look that made his father turn round to me laughing and ask, without saying it, “Isn’t he adorable?”