‘Not that their air and manner,’ resumed Joe, ‘impressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I believe I told them so.’
‘Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it?’ asked Dick.
‘Except on the general grounds of coming away from such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and scarcely vouchsafed a word, and as for Walpole, he made some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn sensibilities—so like what one reads in a French novel, that the very sound of them betrays unreality.’
‘But was it, then, so very impossible to be sorry for leaving this?’ asked Nina calmly.
‘Certainly not for any man but Walpole.’
‘And why not Walpole?’
‘Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and read them so clearly; you to whom the secret anatomy of the “heart” is no mystery, and who understand how to trace the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his small nature. He might be miserable at being separated from himself—there could be no other estrangement would affect him.’
‘This was not always your estimate of your friend,’ said Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word.
‘Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first hour I met him. Since then, some space of time has intervened, and though it has made no change in him, I hope it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the point in life where men not only have convictions but avow them.’
‘Come, come; I can remember what precious good-luck you called it to make his acquaintance,’ cried Dick, half angrily.