“I’ll just fasten this rose I have here in his hat; he saw it in my hair to-night, and he’ll remember it.”
She left the garden, the window was closed. The light was put out, and all was silent.
CHAPTER XV. SISTERS’ CONFIDENCES.
THE day of Calvert’s departure was a very sad one at the villa; so was the next and the next! It is impossible to repeat the routine of a quiet life when we have lost one whose pleasant companionship imparted to the hours a something of his own identity, without feeling the dreary blank his absence leaves, and, together with this, comes the not very flattering conviction of how little of our enjoyment we owed to our own efforts, and how much to his.
“I never thought we should have missed him so much,” said Emily as she sat with her sister beside the lake, where the oars lay along the boats unused, and the fishing-net hung to dry from the branches of the mulberry-tree.
“Of course we miss him,” said Florence peevishly. “You don’t live in daily, hourly intercourse with a person without feeling his absence; but I almost think it is a relief,” said she, slightly flushing.
“A relief, Florry! And in what way?”
“I don’t know; that is, I’m not disposed to go into a nice analysis of Mr. Calvert’s mind, and the effect produced upon my own, by the mere iteration of things I never agreed with. Besides, I don’t want in the least to limit your regrets for him. He was one of your favourites.”
“I always thought him more a favourite of yours than mine, Florry.”