"I will go myself," replied Tredennis.
He turned to leave the room, and Arbuthnot walked slowly toward the window. The next moment Tredennis turned from the door and followed him.
"If I have ever done you injustice," he said, "the time is past for it, and I ask your pardon."
"Perhaps it is not justice I need," said Arbuthnot, "but mercy—and I don't think you have ever been unjust to me. It wouldn't have been easy."
"In my place," said Tredennis, with a visible effort, "you would find it easier than I do to say what you wished. I"—
"You mean that you pity me," Arbuthnot interposed. "As I said before, perhaps I need pity. Sometimes I think I do;" and the slight touch of dreariness in his tone echoed in Tredennis's ear long after he had left him and gone on his way.
CHAPTER XVII.
It was ten o'clock and bright moonlight when Tredennis reached his destination, the train having brought him to a way-side station two miles distant, where he had hired a horse, and struck out into the county road. In those good old days when the dwelling of every Virginia gentleman was his "mansion," the substantial pile of red brick before whose gate-way he dismounted had been a mansion too, and had not been disposed to trifle with its title, but had insisted upon it with a dignified squareness which scorned all architectural devices to attract attention. Its first owner had chosen its site with a view to the young "shade-trees" upon it, and while he had lived upon his property had been almost as proud of his trees as of his "mansion"; and when, long afterward, changes had taken place, and the objects of his pride fell into degenerate hands, as the glories of the mansion faded, its old friends, the trees, grew and flourished, and seemed to close kindly in about it, as if to soften and shadow its decay.