George Gaunt came to the Palazzo next day. He came in the afternoon with his father, to be introduced to Waring; and he came again after dinner--for these neighbours did not entertain each other at the working-day meals, so to speak, but only in light ornamental ways, with cups of tea or black coffee--with both his parents to spend the evening. He was thin and of a slightly greenish tinge in his brownness, by reason of India and the illnesses he had gone through; but his slim figure had a look of power; and he had kind eyes, like his mother’s, under the hollows of his brows: not a handsome young man, yet not at all common or ordinary, with a soldier’s neatness and upright bearing. To see Markham beside him with his insignificant figure, his little round head tufted with sandy hair, his one-sided look with his glass in his eye, or his ear tilted up on the opposite side, was as good as a sermon upon race and its advantages. For Markham was the fifteenth lord; and the Gaunts were, it was understood, of as good as no family at all. Captain George from that first evening had neither ear nor eye for any one but Constance. He followed her about shyly wherever she moved; he stood over her when she sat down. He said little, for he was shy, poor fellow; yet he did sometimes hazard a remark, which was always subsidiary or responsive to something she had said.
Mrs Gaunt’s distress at this subversion of all she had intended was great. She got Frances into a corner of the loggia while the others talked, and thrust upon her a pretty sandalwood box inlaid with ivory, one of those that George had brought from India. “It was always intended for you, dear,” she said. “Of course he could not venture to offer it himself.”
“But, dear Mrs Gaunt,” said Frances, with a low laugh, in which all her little bitterness evaporated, “I don’t think he has so much as seen my face. I am sure he would not know me if we met in the road.”
“Oh, my dear child,” cried poor Mrs Gaunt, “it has been such a disappointment to me. I have just cried my eyes out over it. To think you should not have taken to each other after all my dreams and hopes.”
Frances laughed again; but she did not say that there had been no failure of interest on her side. She said, “I hope he will soon be quite strong and well. You will write and tell me about everybody.”