“I’ve been thinking, Cecily.  Suppose we go over to Capri for a change?”

“I am quite willing, aunt.”

“I think Mr. Elgar has not been there yet.  He might accompany us.”

Unprepared for this, Cecily murmured an assent.

“Do you know how much longer he thinks of staying in Italy?”

“We haven’t spoken of it.”

“Has he given up his literary projects?”

“I’m afraid we didn’t speak of that either.”

“Shall you be satisfied if he continues to live quite without occupation?”

“I don’t for a moment think he purposes that.”

“And yet it will certainly be the ease as long as he remains here—­ or wherever else we happen to be living.”

Mrs. Lessingham allowed her to ponder this for a few minutes.  Then she resumed the train of thought.

“Have you had leisure yet to ask yourself, my dear, what use you will make of the great influence you have acquired over Mr. Elgar’s mind?”

“That is not quite the form my thoughts would naturally take, aunt,” Cecily replied, with gentleness.

“Yet may it not be the form they should?  You are accustomed to think for yourself to a greater extent than girls whose education has been more ordinary; you cannot take it ill if I remind you now of certain remarks I have made on Mr. Elgar lately, and remind you also that I am not alone in my view of him.  Don’t fear that I shall say anything unkind; but if you feel equal to a woman’s responsibilities, you must surely exercise a woman’s good sense.  Let us say nothing more than that Mr. Elgar has fallen into habits of excessive indolence; doesn’t it seem to you that you might help him out of hem?”

“I think he may not need help as you understand it, now.”

“My dear, he needs it perhaps five hundred times more than he did before.  If you decline to believe me, I shall be only too much justified by your experience hereafter.”

“What would you have me do?”

“What must very soon occur to your own excellent wits, Cecily—­for I won’t give up all my pride in you.  Mr. Elgar should, of course, go back to England, and do something that becomes him; he must decide what.  Let him have a few days with us in Capri; then go, and so far recommend himself in our eyes.  No one can make him see that this is what his dignity—­if nothing else—­demands, except yourself.  Think of it, dear.”

Cecily did think of it, long and anxiously.  Thanks to Elgar, her meditations had a dark background such as her own fancy would never have supplied.

He knew not how sadly the image of him had been blurred in Cecily’s mind, the man who lay that night in his room overlooking the port.  Whether such ignorance were for his aid or his disadvantage, who shall venture to say?