"I don't like it," George thought, as he walked on in silence by the side of his uncle--"I don't like it. And it's very plain I am not the only black sheep in the family flock, nor, I suspect, the blackest. I will see that he writes to New York; and I will tell Routh all about this when he comes, and hear what he says. My uncle will not mind my telling him now, I dare say."
"When do you expect your friends, George?" asked Mr. Felton, striking the chord of George's thought, after the fashion which every one knows and nobody can explain.
"To-morrow, or the day after, sir," replied George. "Routh wrote from Paris yesterday."
"I am sorry for Mrs. Routh," said Mr. Felton; "she's too secretive and too cautious, too silent and too cunning, for my fancy; but she is an interesting woman and a wonderfully good wife, I am sure, though of the stony order."
"That is come to her lately," said George, in an eager tone, "since her health has failed so much. You cannot imagine what a different creature she was only a little while ago. She was as bright as the sunshine and as gay as a lark. She is, indeed, a wonderful wife--the most devoted I ever knew; and her usefulness in everything, in all a woman's ordinary ways and in many quite extraordinary, in all Routh's business matters, is marvellous. Even her delicate health, though she has lost her good looks very much, and her spirits quite, has not made any alteration in that. I cannot conceive what Routh would do without her."
"H'm! I wonder if he is quite so uncertain," said Mr. Felton drily, and to George's surprise. "I don't like your friend, and I don't trust Mm."
"What do you mean?" asked George. "Don't trust him? Do you mean that you don't trust his feelings or his conduct to Harriet?"
"Precisely so, my dear boy. Mrs. Routh is a devoted wife; but I am very much mistaken--and remember I have been playing looker-on for a fortnight or so, and interested in my part, too, considering what you told me about yourself and these people--if she is not a very unhappy one. I do not pretend to explain my convictions, but I am quite clear about them. She loves Routh--that's plain enough--but she is miserable with him."
"Do you really think so? She is dreadfully changed, I know, but I thought it might be only in consequence of her ill health. Miserable with him! At all events, he is not unkind to her. I know he is very anxious about her health; for he has left London, at much inconvenience and great risk of loss, to bring her here for the waters."
"And for a turn at the gaming-tables for himself, I fancy. Routh has to me the air of a man who has been constrained into temporary respectability, and is heartily tired of it."