"We shall all miss you," she added.
"That will be kinder still," he answered. "Might I be permitted to quote the ancient anecdote of the colored warrior, who, on running away in battle, was reproached and told that a single life counted as nothing on such great occasions, and that if he had fallen he would not have been missed,—his reply to this heroic statement of the case being, that he should have been likely to miss himself. I shall miss myself, and already a gentle melancholy begins to steal over me. I am not the gleesome creature I was before good luck befell me."
But, despite this lightness of tone, their walk was not a very cheerful one; indeed, after this speech they were rather quiet, and they parted with few words at the door, Arbuthnot declining to go into the house.
When Agnes entered alone Mrs. Merriam looked up from her novel in some surprise.
"I thought I heard Mr. Arbuthnot," she said.
"He left me at the door," Mrs. Sylvestre answered.
"What!" said Mrs. Merriam, "without coming to say good-night to me! I wanted to tell him what a dissipated evening I have been spending with my new book."
"He has been telling us good news," said Agnes, standing before the fire and loosening her furs. "He has been offered a consulship."
Mrs. Merriam closed her book and laid it on the table.
"Will he accept it?" she asked.