“I suppose you 've no objection to my taking a canter on him this morning?”
“Ride him, by all means,” said Agincourt, shaking his hand cordially while he said adieu.
“Why did you ask him to dinner to-day?” said Heathcote, peevishly. “I wanted you to have come over and dined with us. My father is eager to see you, and so is May.”
“Let us go to tea, then. And how are they?—how is he looking?”
“Broken,—greatly broken. I was shocked beyond measure to see him so much aged since we met, and his spirits gone,—utterly gone.”
“Whence is all this?”
“He says that I deserted him,—that he was forsaken.”
“And is he altogether wrong, Charley? Does not conscience prick you on that score?”
“He says, too, that I have treated May as cruelly and as unjustly; also, that I have broken up their once happy home. In fact, he lays all at my door.”
“And have you seen her?”