“I 'm convinced it was all religious,” chimed in Marion, who triumphed mercilessly over the poor parson's confusion. “It is what they call 'in season and out of season,' and they are true to their device; for no men on earth more heartily defy the dictates of tact or delicacy.”
“Oh, Marion, what are you saying?” whispered Nelly.
“It's no time for honeyed words, Ellen, in the presence of a heavy calamity; but I 'd like to ask Mr. L'Estrange why, when he saw the danger of the theme they were discussing, he did not try to change the topic.”
“So I did. I led him to talk of myself and my interests.”
“An admirable antidote to excitement, certainly,” muttered Culduff to Temple, who seemed to relish the joke intensely.
“You say that my father had been reading his letters. Did he appear to have received any tidings to call for unusual anxiety?” asked Augustus.
“I found him, as I thought, looking very ill, careworn almost, when I entered. He had been writing, and seemed fatigued and exhausted. His first remark to me was, I remember, a mistake.” L'Estrange here stopped, suddenly. He did not desire to repeat the speech about being invited to the picnic. It would have been an awkwardness on all sides.
“What do you call a mistake, sir?” asked Marion, calmly.
“I mean he asked me something which a clearer memory would have reminded him not to have inquired after.”
“This grows interesting. Perhaps you will enlighten us a little farther, and say what the blunder was.”