"Thank you a thousand times! But what you say confirms a resolution I had taken before you came. I shall make it up with my family and return home."
"Oh, I am so really glad. How wise in you!"
Vivian turned away his head abruptly.
"Your pictures of family life and domestic peace, you see," he said, "seduced me more than you thought. When do you leave town?"
"Why, I believe, early next week."
"So soon," said Vivian, thoughtfully. "Well, perhaps I may ask you yet to introduce me to Mr. Trevanion; for who knows?—my family and I may fall out again. But I will consider. I think I have heard you say that this Trevanion is a very old friend of your father's or uncle's?"
"He, or rather Lady Ellinor, is an old friend of both."
"And therefore would listen to your recommendations of me. But perhaps I may not need them. So you have left—left of your own accord—a situation that seemed more enjoyable, I should think, than rooms in a college. Left, why did you leave?"
And Vivian fixed his bright eyes full and piercingly on mine.
"It was only for a time, for a trial, that I was there," said I, evasively; "out at nurse, as it were, till the Alma Mater opened her arms,—alma indeed she ought to be to my father's son."