When he looked up, Arthur thought his face was more haggard than it had been, and there was a certain excitement in his manner. He rang the bell vigorously. "You will say I am a pretty host, Mr. Forrest," he said lightly; "this is scarcely the entertainment I promised you."
Then, as Karl, who had been in the close neighborhood of the room expecting some such summons, appeared in the doorway, "Try and get a small kettle, two tumblers and a lemon."
In a very short time the required articles were in the room, and with his favorite beverage before him the frown passed from Maurice's brow and the gloomy abstraction from his manner.
He returned to the descriptions which his adjournment to his own room had interrupted, and Arthur was by turns convulsed with merriment, thrilling with sympathy, absorbed in interest; but Maurice's tales left a sad impression. There ran through them all the spirit of the preacher's bitter cry, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
"Yes, Solomon was a wise man," cried Maurice at the end of one of his vivid bits of description. "'One man in a thousand have I found, but a woman have I not found.'"
He flung down his glass with a laugh so bitter that it made his young companion shudder.
"You look incredulous," continued Maurice; "when the gray begins to sprinkle your hair you will come to the same conclusion. Look!" he bowed his head and showed the deep furrows that lined his brow, the white that shone out here and there from his dark hair. "I could have done great things in the world: a woman made me what I am—a wreck in every sense of the word."
The whisky was rapidly mounting to the man's brain. Maurice's cheek was flushed, his eyes glistened, but he recollected himself suddenly: "I am a fool to prate about my own affairs, God knows it were best to hide them; but, young man, you will understand it all some day." He laughed harshly. "Lives there a man who has not suffered?"
Arthur listened to his ravings, and as he did so the memory of Margaret's pure life, the echo of her noble words, shone out to him like light through the darkness of her husband's desperate words.
At first he felt his heart swell with indignation, but he looked at Maurice and the indignation changed to pity. "Yes," said the young man to himself, "to believe such a woman false must be enough to kill a man's faith in humanity."