"You guess more than you choose to tell," was Mrs. Merriam's inward thought. Aloud she said:
"He is the finest human being it has been my pleasure to meet. He is the natural man. If I were a girl again I think I should make a hero of him, and be unhappy for his sake."
"It would be easy to make a hero of him," said Agnes.
"Very!" responded Arbuthnot. "Unavoidable, in fact." And he laid upon the table the bit of hyacinth he had picked up in the boat and brought home with him. "If I carry it away," was his private thought, "I shall fall into the habit of sitting and weakening my mind over it. It is weak enough already." But he knew, at the same time, that Colonel Tredennis had done something toward assisting him to form the resolution. "A trivial masculine vanity," he thought, "not unfrequently strengthens one's position."
In the meantime Tredennis went to Amory. He found him in the room which was, in its every part, so strong a reminder of Bertha. It wore a desolate look, and Amory had evidently been walking up and down it, pushing chairs and footstools aside carelessly, when he found them in his way. He had thrown himself, at last, into Bertha's own special easy-chair, and leaned back in it, with his hands thrown out over its padded arms. He had plainly not slept well the night before, and his dress had a careless and dishevelled look, very marked in its contrast with the customary artistic finish of his attire.
He sprang up when he saw Tredennis, and began to speak at once.
"I say!" he exclaimed, "this is terrible!"
"You have been disappointed," said Tredennis.
"I have been rui"—he checked himself; "disappointed isn't the word," he ended. "The whole thing has been laid aside—laid aside—think of it! as if it were a mere nothing; an application for a two-penny half-penny pension! Great God! what do the fellows think they are dealing with?"