“And this letter, has she got it still?” asked Milly.
“No, neither she nor any other will ever read it now. I have torn it to atoms. The wind has carried the last fragment at this moment over the lake.”
“Oh dear; what misery all this is,” cried the girl in an accent of deep affliction. “If you knew how she is attached—” Then suddenly checking the harsh indiscretion of her words, she added, “I am sure you did all for the best, Mr. Calvert I must go back now. You’ll come and see us, or perhaps you’ll let me write to you, to-morrow.”
“I have to say good-bye, now,” said he, sadly. “I may see you all again within a week. It may be this is a good-bye for ever.”
He kissed her hand as he spoke, and turned to the lake, where his boat was lying.
“How amazed she’ll be to hear that she saw a letter—read it—held it in her hands,” muttered he, “but I’ll stake my life she’ll never doubt the fact when it is told to her by those who believe it.”
“You seem to be in rare spirits,” said Barnard when Calvert returned to the inn. “Have you proposed and been accepted?”
“Not exactly,” said the other, smiling, “but I have had a charming evening; one of those fleeting moments of that ‘vie de famille’ Balzac tells us are worth all our wild and youthful excesses.”
“Yes!” replied Barnard, scoffingly; “domesticity would seem to be your forte. Heaven help your wife, say I, if you ever have one.”
“You don’t seem to be aware how you disparage conjugal life, my good friend, when you speak of it as a thing in which men of your stamp are the ornaments. It would be a sorry institution if its best requirements were a dreary temperament and a disposition that mistakes moodiness for morality.”