“And this black man,—­what of him?  He was flung out to starve and die; a proper fate, surely, for his presumption.  Poor fool! how did he dare to think he could compete with his masters!  You know nothing of him ?”

Surely he must be mistaken.  What could this black man, or this matter, be to her? yet as he listened her voice sounded to his ear like that of one in mortal pain.  What held him silent?  Why did he not tell her, why did he not in some way make her comprehend, that he, delicate exclusive, and patrician, as the people of his set thought him, had gone to this man, had lifted him from his sorrow and despondency to courage and hope once more; had found him work; would see that the place he strove to fill in the world should be filled, could any help of his secure that end.  Why did the modesty which was a part of him, and the high-bred reserve which shrank from letting his own mother know of the good deeds his life wrought, hold him silent now?

In that silence something fell between them.  What was it?  But a moment, yet in that little space it seemed to him as though continents divided them, and seas rolled between.  “Francesca!” he cried, under his breath,—­he had never before called her by her Christian name,—­“Francesca!” and stretched out his hand towards her, as a drowning man stretches forth his hand to life.

“This room is stifling!” she said for answer; and her voice, dulled and unnatural, seemed to his strangely confused senses as though it came from a far distance,—­“I am suffering:  shall we go out to the air?”

CHAPTER VI

  “But more than loss about me clings.”

  Jean Ingelow

“No! no, I am mad to think it!  I must have been dreaming! what could there have been in that talk to have such an effect as I have conjured up?  She pitied Franklin! yes, she pities every one whom she thinks suffering or wronged.  Dear little tender heart! of course it was the room,—­didn’t she say she was ill? it must have been awful; the heat and the closeness got into my head,—­that’s it.  Bad air is as bad as whiskey on a man’s brain.  What a fool I made of myself! not even answering her questions.  What did she think of me?  Well.”

Surrey in despair pushed away the book over which he had been bending all the afternoon, seeing for every word Francesca, and on every page an image of her face.  “I’ll smoke myself into some sort of decent quiet, before I go up town, at least”; and taking his huge meerschaum, settling himself sedately, began his quieting operation with appalling energy.  The soft rings, gray and delicate, taking curious and airy shapes, floated out and filled the room; but they were not soothing shapes, nor ministering spirits of comfort.  They seemed filmy garments, and from their midst faces beautiful, yet faint and dim, looked at him, all of them like unto her face; but when he dropped his pipe and bent forward, the wreaths of smoke fell into lines that made the faces appear sad and bathed in tears, and the images faded from his sight.