another month or two, but not permanently. Lovers are so selfish: they don't care if they upset all your domestic arrangements, and spoil your harmonies with the discord of their sweet bells jangled. It ought not to be encouraged, nor yet allowed.
[1]I was wholly mistaken in this, as will appear by the next chapter. R. T.]
XIX.
CONSPIRACY.
The summer has not done for any of us what it ought; quite the reverse. Even I am not in my usual form, if Mabel and Jane are right. They had let me alone for some time: last night they attacked me together—a preconcerted movement, obviously.
"Robert, you are pale, almost haggard. You need a change."
"Why," said I, "I've just had a change—or rather several of them. We've been back only three weeks."
"You need mountain air: the sea does not agree with you. And Newport is not what it used to be."
"It's a good deal more so, if you mean that; but I don't know that its increased muchness has damaged my health to any great extent."