"
"Ah, Jimmy!" said Delorme. "Jimmy was a Tartar!"
He went off at score into recollections of Whistler, drawing hard all the
time.
Victoria did not listen. She was thinking of those sounds of footsteps
she had heard under her window at dawn, and passing her room. This
morning Harry looked as usual, except for something in the eyes, which
none but she would notice. What had he been doing all those hours? There
was nothing erratic or abnormal about Harry. Sound sleep from the moment
he put his head on his pillow to the moment at eight o'clock when his
servant with great difficulty woke him, was the rule with him.
What could have happened the night before--while he and Lydia Penfold
were alone together? Victoria had seen them come back into the general
company, had indeed been restlessly on the watch for their return. It
had seemed to her--though how be sure in that mingled light?--both at the
moment of their reappearance and afterward, that Harry was somewhat
unusually pale and quiet, while the girl's look had struck her as
singular--_exaltee_--the eyes shining--yet the manner composed and sweet
as usual. She already divined the theorist in Lydia, the speculator with
life and conduct. "But not with my Harry!" thought the mother, fiercely.
But how could she prevent it? What could she do? What can any mother do
when the wave of energy--spiritual and physical--has risen or is rising
to its height in the young creature, and the only question is how and
where it shall break; in crash and tempest, or in a summer sea?
Delorme suddenly raised his great head from his easel.
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