“Well, I was going to say dogs, guns, and horses,” returned Alice; “and I’m afraid I must adhere to my text, unless you prefer fiction to fact.”
She spoke jestingly; but the lines which care, and thought, and intellectual exertion had already traced on Arthur’s brow deepened, as, after a pause, he murmured, half in reply to Alice, half in soliloquy—
“I am disappointed, deeply disappointed; it ought to be so different! I—I wish I were not going abroad to-morrow; and yet I could not be a frequent visitor in this house!”
The last words were inaudible, though, by one of those intuitions which often compensate for the inefficiency of our physical powers, Alice divined his train of reasoning, and with subtle generalship diverted the attack, by carrying the war into the enemy’s country, as she replied—
“Do not puzzle your brains about me and Harry; we jog on very serenely together, now we have found out each other’s peculiarities.”
“But you never had any peculiarities, either of you,” interrupted Arthur, positively; “except that Harry was the finest, noblest, manliest fellow going, and you were a good, simple-hearted, sweet-tempered little girl. What do you mean by peculiarities?”
“Never mind us,” continued Alice, not heeding his interruption; “I want to know something about you. You say I have changed from a child into a woman, but you have turned from a young man into a middle-aged one during these last six months; you are either ill or unhappy, or working yourself to death—all three, perhaps.”
“Oh, you are fanciful, and not used to the pale faces of us Londoners,” returned Arthur.
“You cannot put me off in that manner,” continued Alice, pertinaciously; “people do not look ill and careworn without some cause for doing so. How is it, pray, that you never come here? so fond as you used to be of Kate, too! I expected to find you regularly installed as l’enfant de famille. Do you know I begin to have my suspicions——”
“Hush!” interrupted Arthur, in a low, stem voice; “whatever you may suspect, never refer to this subject again, there are some sorrows in life for which there is no remedy; these must be endured and struggled with in silence, for so only can they be borne. If you would not give me pain, forget that this idea ever occurred to you.”