That sight sobered him at once; he knelt down beside her, threw his arms around her,—it was his first embrace,—and kissed the tears away.
"How have I distressed you? Why do you weep?"
"Let me weep on, Percival, dear Percival! These tears are like prayers,- -they speak to Heaven—and of you!"
A step came noiselessly over the grass, and between the lovers and the sunlight stood Gabriel Varney.
CHAPTER XII.
SUDDEN CELEBRITY AND PATIENT HOPE.
Percival was unusually gloomy and abstracted in his way to town that day, though Varney was his companion, and in the full play of those animal spirits which he owed to his unrivalled physical organization and the obtuseness of his conscience. Seeing, at length, that his gayety did not communicate itself to Percival, he paused, and looked at him suspiciously. A falling leaf startles the steed, and a shadow the guilty man.
"You are sad, Percival," he said inquiringly. "What has disturbed you?"
"It is nothing,—or, at least, would seem nothing to you," answered Percival, with an effort to smile, for I have heard you laugh at the doctrine of presentiments. We sailors are more superstitious."
"What presentiment can you possibly entertain?" asked Varney, more anxiously than Percival could have anticipated.