Mr. Atkins stood at the window, sullenly despairing.
Ryan, completely at his wit’s end, sat before the blazing fire in a crouching attitude, and with crestfallen visage.
Sir Harold, Atkins and Ryan turned, as by one impulse, toward the young earl, as he bounded lightly into the room. Their eyes expressed their wonder at the change a few hours had wrought in him.
“You look like incarnate sunshine, Arthur,” said the baronet sadly. “Ah, the elastic spirit of youth!”
The young lord laughed joyously, his fair face aglow with the gladness that filled his being. He took off his greatcoat and hat, great drops of sleet or rain falling from it, and shook himself, as he said:
“There’s a mist beginning to fall. We shall have a wet day to-morrow.”
Sir Harold looked more keenly at the young earl, and a sudden excitement possessed him.
“What has happened, Arthur?” he demanded. “You have news of Neva?”
The glad smiles rippled like waves of sunlight over the young lord’s mouth, and a joyous light danced in his blue eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “I have news of Neva.”