“I thought it would be deadly at Omeath,” Lawrence was saying. “If it had not been for the mater, I should not have come, and, instead, it has been very pleasant. How often it happens that we start off on some trip we expect to enjoy thoroughly, and are disappointed all through; whereas we make martyrs of ourselves and undertake something we detest, and it turns out a pleasure from beginning to end.”
Eileen looked a little thoughtful. The thought crossed her mind that he had not, then, came back for her.
“Yet you seemed happy enough here before?” she remarked at last.
“So I was,” he replied at once; “and I had just the same feeling about coming in the first place. But then I did not know about you, Eileen.”
“But you did this time,” smiling.
“Three years is so long,” he answered unblushingly; “and I imagined, of course, you would have changed, or got married, or something. Most girls change very much in three years.”
“Do they?” quietly.
“Yes; but you and Paddy are evidently different. I might have known you would be.” He turned the subject deftly to a less dangerous theme, speaking of mutual friends, until a sudden cutting censure brought a remonstrance to her lips.
He looked into her face and changed his tone suddenly.
“All the black sheep are white to you, Eileen. You are too ideal. You look at everything through the spectacles of idealism, and expect too much of life. You would be wiser to try and harden your heart, and care a little less about everything. You seem to regard most of your fellow-creatures as possible angels, and all the time we are most of us rogues and scoundrels.”