“No,” answered the same low, stifled voice that had before replied to Lumley’s vain attempts to provoke conversation; “it was a melancholy employment, and perhaps it is not right to indulge in it.”
“May I inquire what author so affected you.”
“It is but a volume of poems, and I am no judge of poetry; but it contains thoughts which—which—” Mrs. Templeton paused abruptly, and Lumley quietly took up the book.
“Ah!” said he, turning to the title-page—“my friend ought to be much flattered.”
“Your friend?”
“Yes: this, I see, is by Ernest Maltravers, a very intimate ally of mine.”
“I should like to see him,” cried Mrs. Templeton, almost with animation. “I read but little; it was by chance that I met with one of his books, and they are as if I heard a dear friend speaking to me. Ah! I should like to see him!”
“I’m sure, madam,” said the voice of a third person, in an austere and rebuking accent, “I do not see what good it would do your immortal soul to see a man who writes idle verses, which appear to me, indeed, highly immoral. I just looked into that volume this morning and found nothing but trash—love-sonnets, and such stuff.”
Mrs. Templeton made no reply, and Lumley, in order to change the conversation, which seemed a little too matrimonial for his taste, said, rather awkwardly, “You are returned very soon, sir.”
“Yes, I don’t like walking in the rain!”