"Yes, of course," she says, dejectedly. A cloud seems to have fallen upon her happy hour. "When did you hear that—that last singer?" she asks, in a subdued voice.
"At home," returns he. He is gazing out of the window, with his hands clasped behind his back, and does not pay so much attention to her words as is his wont.
"Is your home very beautiful?" asks she, timidly, looking at him the more earnestly in that he seems rapt in contemplation of the valley that spreads itself before him.
"Yes, very beautiful," he answers, thinking of the stately oaks and aged elms and branching beeches that go so far to make up the glory of the ivied Towers.
"How paltry this country must appear in comparison with your own!" goes on the girl, longing for a contradiction, and staring at her little brown hands, the fingers of which are twining and intertwining nervously with one another, "How glad you will be to get back to your own home!"
"Yes, very glad," returns he, hardly knowing what he says. He has gone back again to his first thoughts,—his mother's boudoir, with its old china, and its choice water-colors that line the walls, and its delicate Italian statuettes. In his own home—which is situated about fourteen miles from the Towers, and which is rather out of repair through years of disuse—there are many rooms. He is busy now trying to remember them, and to decide which of them would look best decked out in crimson and gray, or blue and silver: he hardly knows which would suit her best. Perhaps, after all——
"How strange it is!" says Mona's voice, that has now a faint shade of sadness in it. "How people come and go in one's lives, like the waves of the restless sea, now breaking at one's feet, now receding, now——"
"Only to return," interrupts he, quickly. "And—to break at your feet? to break one's heart, do you mean? I do not like your simile."
"You jest," says Mona, full of calm reproach. "I mean how strangely people fall into one's lives and then out again!" She hesitates. Perhaps something in his face warns her, perhaps it is the weariness of her own voice that frightens her, but at this moment her whole expression changes, and a laugh, forced but apparently full of gayety, comes from her lips. It is very well done indeed, yet to any one but a jealous lover her eyes would betray her. The usual softness is gone from them, and only a well-suppressed grief and a pride that cannot be suppressed take its place.
"Why should they fall out again?" says Rodney, a little angrily, hearing only her careless laugh, and—man-like—ignoring stupidly the pain in her lovely eyes. "Unless people choose to forget."