“Oh, for that matter,” said he, as they turned into a field planted thickly with prickly pears, and shaded by olives, “you have but precipitated what would have come to pass very soon, for I had resolved to return.” He had noticed Mildred’s deep mourning, but he had no knowledge of her father’s death. He had immediately, on recognising her, remarked a great alteration in her features. True, it was six years since they had last met; but he had not forgotten, amid the hosts of beautiful faces which he had since seen, those bright eyes and the face free from all anxiety or trace of melancholy which had fixed themselves upon his memory. She was more beautiful now, but there was not the sparkling playfulness of the eye, nor the light-hearted glow in the features; she was more like our Lady of Sorrows whom he had seen above so many Spanish altars, than the merry, laughing maiden of his student days. “You are not quite the Miss Lee of the picnic, if you will forgive me saying so. Have you not passed through some great anxiety or trial?”
“Did you not know I had lost my father? Do you get no English newspapers here?”
“I do not see them often. I have so much to occupy me here that I am unpatriotic enough to confess that I have lost much of my interest in the affairs of my own country.”
“We must hear your story, Mr. Elsworth,” said Aunt Janet, “for there must be a most romantic one to tell, I am thinking. You are more Spanish now than English, and we anticipate quite a revelation of the real life of the people we mix with, but do not in the least understand.”
“Here are the carriages,” said Dr. Graves, who had walked on with Mr. Crowe a little in advance.
Dr. Graves and Mr. Crowe expressed their regret for neglecting the ladies. It was, in fact, a risky neighbourhood; and as they had been warned that they might suffer annoyance if they got away from their guide, they could only blame themselves.
Mr. Crowe was not very cordial in his manner towards Elsworth. Dr. Graves was courteous enough in a formal sort of way. He had known his father; and with a fashionable physician’s worldly wisdom made it a rule never to make an enemy of anybody if he could help it, but to be on his best behaviour to all the world.
“You have dropped from the clouds, Mr. Elsworth,” said he.
“Or sprung from the earth, rather,” said Mr. Crowe.
Elsworth knew Crowe did not like him. They had never quite got on together since he neglected to attend his experimental physiology class which met at church time on Sunday mornings in his own private laboratory—the chamber of horrors it was called. He could never bring himself to do so.