“Oh! because I have been here three nights in succession, I suppose, and did not find you here. I was disappointed.”
“But you found Uncle Septimus in his study. I could hear you talking there until quite late.”
“Of course I was very glad to see him and talk with him. For it is to him that I owe a certain half-developed impatience with the uneducated—with whom I deal all my life, except for a few hours now and then in the study and here in the turf-shelter with you. I can see—even in the dark—that you look grave. Do not do that. It is not worth that.”
He broke off with his easy laugh, as if to banish any suggestion of gravity coming from himself.
“It is not worth looking grave about. And I am sorry if I was rude a minute ago. I had no right, of course, to assume that you would be here. I suppose it was impertinent—was that it?”
“I will not quarrel,” she answered, soothingly—“if that is what you want.”
Her voice was oddly placid. It almost seemed to suggest that she had come to-night for a certain purpose; that one subject of conversation alone would interest her, and that to all others she must turn a deaf ear.
He came a little nearer, and, leaning against the turf wall, looked down at her. He was suddenly grave now. The róles were again reversed; for it was the woman who was tenacious to one purpose and the man who seemed inconsequent, flitting from grave to gay, from one thought to another. His apology had been made graciously enough, but with a queer pride, quite devoid of the sullenness which marks the pride of the humbly situated.
“No; I do not want that,” he answered. “I want a little sympathy, that is all; because I have been educated above my station. And I looked for it from those who are responsible for that which is nearly always a catastrophe. And it is your uncle who educated me. He is responsible in the first instance, and, of course, I am grateful to him.”
“He could never have educated you,” put in Miriam, “if you had not been ready for the education.”