"How do you judge?"
"That is, of all questions a man can ask, the most difficult to answer. How do you judge of anything?"
"By applying the test of past experience to present fact," I replied.
"Then past experience is that by which I judge. How can you expect me to tell you the whole of my past experience, in order that you may understand how my judgment is formed? It would take years."
"You are a pair of very singular men," remarked John Carvel. "You seem to take to argument as fish to the water. You ought to be successful in a school of walking philosophers."
John seemed more depressed than I had ever seen him, and only made an observation from time to time, as though to make a show of hospitality. The professor interested me, but I could see that we were boring Carvel. The conversation languished, and before long the latter proposed that we should go into the drawing-room for half an hour before bed-time.
We found the ladies seated around the fire. Their voices fell suddenly as we entered the room, and all of them looked towards John and the professor, as though expecting something. It struck me that they had been talking of some matter which was not intended for our ears.
"We have been making plans for Christmas," said Mrs. Carvel, as though to break the awkward silence that followed our entrance.
VIII.
Early on the following morning John Carvel came to my room. He looked less anxious than on the previous night, but he was evidently not altogether his former self.