CHAPTER XVI. A LOVERS’ QUARREL
IN course of time Loyd arrived at the villa. He came tired and worn out by a fatiguing journey. There had been floods, broken bridges, and bad roads in Savoy, and the St. Gothard was almost impassable from a heavy snow-storm. The difficulties of the road had lost him a day, one of the very few he was to have with them, and he came, wearied and somewhat irritated, to his journey’s end.
Lovers ought, perhaps, to be more thoughtful about “effect” than they are in real life. They might take a lesson in this respect with good profit from the drama, where they enter with all the aids that situation and costume can give them. At all events, Calvert would scarcely have presented himself in the jaded and disordered condition in which Loyd now appeared.
“How ill he looks, poor fellow,” said Emily, as the two sisters left him to dress for dinner.
“I should think he may look ill. Fancy his travelling on, night and day, through rain and sleet and snow, and always feeling that his few hours here were to be short ened by all these disasters. And, besides all this, he is sorry now for the step he has taken; he begins to suspect he ought not to have left England; that this separation—it must be for at least two years—bodes ill to us. That it need not have been longer had he stayed at the home bar, and had, besides, the opportunity of coming out to see us in Vacation. That it was his friends who over-persuaded him; and now that he has had a little time for calm reflection, away from them, he really sees no obstacles to his success at Westminster that he will not have to encounter at Calcutta.”
“And will he persist, in face of this conviction?”
“Of course he will! He cannot exhibit himself to the world as a creature who does not know his own mind for two days together.”
“Is that of more consequence than what would really serve his interests, Florry?”
“I am no casuist, Milly, but I think that the impression a man makes by his character for resolution is always of consequence.”