"Nay, William, nothing of the kind," replied Algernon Grey. "We are all upon the search for happiness, you and I alike; and each must seek his in his own way. I thank you for all the trouble you have taken; but birds when they are free will use their wings; and so will I to-morrow. I have not been so long accustomed to a cage as to love its neighbourhood."
"Stay, stay," cried Lovet. "Your pardon, my good cousin! I am not on the search for happiness; that is a wild-goose chase, always beginning, never ending; still disappointing, offering fruition nowhere. Pleasure, pleasure is what I seek--the honey that is in every flower. If we exhaust one, why let us fly on to another. The bee for ever, Algernon! That industrious insect is my emblem. Good faith! I win ask the heralds if I may not put it in my arms. Like it, I seek the sweets of life, wherever they are to be found; and the wild thyme, or the cultivated rose is all the same to me."
"But a spendthrift-bee," answered Algernon Grey; "for you lay up no store for the future, but consuming all the honey that you find, and building no waxy cells for future years. After all, the emblem is not a pleasant one; for were you as thrifty as the best, our master, Fate, would come and smoke you in the hive."
"I will give him no cause," answered Lovet, gaily; "for I will eat my honey while I have got it, and hoard none to tempt his ruthless hands. But a truce to bantering, Algernon; I have really laboured hard to set you free, thinking that a much better way of spending my time than piping to you in prison, like Blondel to good King Richard. But now what is it you intend to do? I have trusted and hoped, that a few hours' quiet reflection, in an airy room up three pair of stairs, would turn the fresh must of your young proprieties to good sound wine, and teach you that where you have all before you that can make life happy, it is needless to go, like a drunken man with a purse full of gold, and flip the ducats with your thumb-nail into a draw-well."
"What do you mean?" asked his cousin; "I intend to throw nothing away that is good. Base coin is as well in a draw-well as anywhere else."
"Nay, nay, be frank," exclaimed Lovet; "I mean that you do not surely intend to quit this place so soon as you have once threatened."
"I see no reason why I should stay," answered Algernon Grey.
"What! not love?" cried the other. "Nay, my good cousin, do not look detected! Can you suppose, that I have not seen, that I do not know? By every sign and token, from an untied collar, to a hat put on wrongside before--from a sigh in the middle of a well-turned sentence, to an answer made as irrelevant to the purpose as an old maid's comment on last Sunday's sermon, you are in love, man--up to the neck in that soft quagmire, love. And, good faith! I must own, too, that, considering your inexperience of such things, and the resistance of your nature to all sweet influences, you have not chosen amiss--bright eyes, sweet lips, a cheek like a ripe peach, hair bright and glossy as the sunshine on a bank of moss, a form that might have made Helen envious, and false Paris doubly false."
Algernon Grey seated himself at the table again, and leaned his head upon his hand, with his eyes thoughtfully bent down, and a red spot in his cheek. He would not, he could not say that he did not love; but he was pained that his clear-sighted cousin had divined the truth.
In the mean time Lovet proceeded, seeing clearly that Algernon did not listen; but trusting that a word or two at least would fall through the inattentive ear upon the mind, and produce, perhaps, a more lasting effect than if they were listened to and answered.