“Now to think,” Isabel said, with sudden recovery of good-humour—that sort of “well done, resolution!” which we utter to ourselves with cheering effect—“that you should have troubled to come all this way on what you might have known was an errand of disappointment!”
“Oh, I wanted, in any case, to see you before starting. I should have been very disappointed if I had missed you.”
He began at once to give a lively sketch of the expedition he had planned, and Isabel listened with much attention, though she interposed no remarks.
“You will bring me an account of it all when you come back,” she said on his ceasing to speak.
“It’s not very clear to me whether I shall come back,” Robert returned. “I have a friend in Smyrna whom I shall go to see, and I shouldn’t wonder if I am tempted to stay out there.”
“What, after all your perseverance in mastering English accomplishments?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t quite know what I shall do with myself if I stay here. Most probably I shall decide to go into harness again, one way or another. And that reminds me of the ‘Coach and Horses.’ I will wend my way to that respectable hostelry.”
“You’ll come and breakfast in the morning?”
“No; I must leave by the 8.15. I want to be early in London.”
“You are rather an unreasonable man, my cousin Robert,” said Isabel, as she stood at leave-taking. “Because I am forced, with every expression of regret, to decline an invitation to a yachting expedition, you are more than half angry with me. I thought you and I were beyond these follies.”