"What did Armari do to annoy you?"
"He did nothing."
"Why do you look so odd, then?"
I did not answer.
"Why, you foolish fellow," said Kate, laughing, and not heeding my entreating look, "it was Schwab, that best of good fellows."
"Was he rude or bearish?" asked Cornelius, reddening.
"Rude!" she replied, impatiently, "he was too civil!"
"Schwab!" echoed Cornelius, in the tone of Caesar's 'Et tu Brute'-- "Schwab, too!"
"Cornelius," I said, a little indignantly, "it was Schwab alone, if you please."
He did not heed me; he was lost in his indignation and astonishment.
"Schwab!" he said again--"Schwab, the woman-hater?"
"There are no women-haters," observed his sister; "her tarts softened his obdurate heart from the first day, and Cupid did the rest. Now you need not look so desperately gloomy, Cornelius; he was not more civil than he had a right to be; and when she let him see quietly she did not like it, he, sensible man, thought there were girls as good and as pretty in Germany, and did not break his heart about her. He kept his own counsel, so did we; and but for me, you would be none the wiser."
"Thank you," shortly said Cornelius, "but as I know this much, and as I am sure there is more, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me all about Armari now."
"Ah! poor fellow," sighed Kate, "he is in a very bad way; I noticed he could scarcely eat, and Schwab said he had not slept a wink since that night at the play."
"He will get over it," impatiently interrupted Cornelius. "I have known him seven times in the same way."
"Then he must lead rather an agitated life; but, as I was saying, or rather, as Mr. Schwab told me, he has lost rest and appetite since that night at the play, when he saw the beautiful Mrs. Gleaver in the box next yours."
She knew all about the opera-glass, and glanced mischievously at her brother. He reddened, looked disconcerted, and exclaimed hastily:
"I don't believe a bit of that."
"Yes, you do," she replied quietly, "and now, Cornelius, mind my words: that sort of thing is not in the girl's way, and will not be for a good time yet; perhaps never, for she has a very flinty heart."
"Don't I know it?" he replied composedly, "and was it not Christian charity made me uneasy about poor Armari? I feared lest that brown, golden hair of hers," he added, smoothing it as he spoke, "might prove such a web as even his heart could not break. Lest her eyebrow, so dark and fine, might be the very bow of Cupid. Lest--"
"Spare us the rest," interrupted Kate, "it must be an arrow shot from the eye at the very least. Don't you see, besides, the girl has sense enough to laugh at it all; though I don't mean to say that if Signor Armari loses his heart and gets it back again so easily, he might not have paid her that little compliment. However, he did not, and it is as well, for she does not chance to be one of those soft girls, who, poor things, must be in love to exist; and her jealous grandpapa, who does not care about her himself, and yet won't let another have her, is, if he but knew it, perfectly safe."
"Is he?" said Cornelius, throwing back his head in his old way.
"Indeed he is," replied his sister, poking the fire in her old way, too; "another piece of advice, Cornelius: don't make the girl vain by talking and acting, as if she were the only decent-looking one in existence."
"There grows but one flower in my garden," he said, looking at me with a fond smile, "and so I fancy that every one casts on it a longing eye; as if elsewhere there grew no flowers."
His flower laid her head upon his shoulder, and looking up in his face, laughed at him for his pains.
"Laugh away!" he observed philosophically, "you have opened in the shade, and you know nothing of the sun; but the sun, my little Daisy, will shine on you yet."
CHAPTER XIV.
I have often tried to remember how passed the autumn and winter--but in vain. No striking events marked that time; and its subtle changes I was then too heedless and too ignorant to note or understand. Two things I have not forgotten.
One is that, next to his painting of course, the chief thought of Cornelius seemed to be to please and amuse me. He spent all his money in taking me about, and literally covered me with his gifts. He had an artist's eye for colour and effect, and was never tired of adorning me in some new way more becoming than the last. When I remonstrated and accused him of extravagance, he asked tenderly if he could spend the money better than on his own darling? In short, the great study of his life seemed to be to lavish on me, every proof of the most passionate fondness.
I was and always had been so fond of him myself, that I wondered at nothing, not even at his fits of jealousy; the heart that gives much is not astonished at receiving much, I let myself be loved without caring why or how. I knew he was devotedly fond of me; I feared no rival; I no longer felt the sting of his indifference or the bitter pang of his jealousy. I had nothing to stimulate my curiosity; nothing to desire or to dread; nothing but to be as happy as the day was long.
The other thing, I remember, is that I had in some measure seized on the power it had pleased Cornelius to relinquish. My will was more powerful over him, than his over me. I did not seek for it; but thus it was. It is almost ever so in human affections: perfect equality between two seldom exists; the sway yielded up by one is immediately and instinctively assumed by the other. With the least exertion of his will, Cornelius could again have converted me into a submissive and obedient child; but to govern always requires a certain amount of indifference; and he seemed to have lost both the power and the wish to rule. I should not have been human if I had not taken some advantage of this. I loved him as dearly as ever; but, secure of his fondness and affection, 1 did not, as once, make his pleasure my sole law. I also remembered that we had a few differences; mere trifles they then seemed to me, and Kate herself made light of them.
"Don't fidget," she invariably said to her brother; "she's but a child."
"A child!" he once replied, with a sigh; "you should hear her philosophize with me!"
"Well, then, she's a philosophical child."
"I don't know what she is," he answered, giving me a reproachful look. "I sometimes think Providence sent her to me as a chastisement for my sins."
"Poor sinner!" said Kate, smiling, "what a penance!"
We were all three sitting in the parlour by the fireside. I pretended to be much concerned, and hid my face in the sofa-pillow. Cornelius gently entreated me not to take it so much to heart, assured me I was no penance, but the joy of his life, and the light of his eyes; made me look up, and saw me laughing at him again.
"There," he said, biting his lip and looking provoked, "do you see her, Kate?"
"She is young and merry. Let her laugh."
"But why will she not be serious? Why will she be so provokingly flighty and slippery?"
"Nonsense!" interrupted Kate. "Let her be what she likes now; she'll be grave enough a few years hence."
He sighed, and called me his perverse darling. I laughed again, and bade him sing me an Irish song. He obeyed, and thus it ended.
As I was not conscious of giving Cornelius any real cause of offence, I made light of his vexation or annoyance, of which, indeed, as I have felt since then, he showed me but that which he could not help betraying. Had he been more tyrannical or exacting, my eyes might have opened; but he could not bear to give me pain. He let me torment him to my heart's content, also disdaining, it may be, to complain or lament. Once only he lost all patience. It was towards the close of winter. Kate was out; we sat alone in the parlour by the fireside. Cornelius had made me put down my work, and sat by me, holding my two hands in one of his, smoothing my hair with the other, and telling me--he had an eloquent tongue that knew how to tell those things, neither too much in earnest, nor yet too much in jest--of his fondness and affection. But I was not just then in the endearing mood. I tried to disengage my hands, and not succeeding, I said a little impatiently:--
"Pray don't!"
He understood, or rather misunderstood me; for he drew away, reddening a little, and looking more embarrassed than displeased, he observed:--
"Where is the harm, Daisy?"
"The harm?" I echoed, astonished at the idea, for between him and me I had never felt the shadow of a reserved thought; "why, of course, there is no harm, since it is you," I added, giving one of his dark locks a pull; "but it gives me the fidgets."
Cornelius looked exasperated.