“With you.”
“In the old days.”
“Now lost forever.”
Their voices sank low and expressive of a deep melancholy. A silence followed. Despard at last, with a sudden effort, began talking in his usual extravagant strain about badgers till at last Mrs. Thornton began to laugh, and the radiancy of their spirits was restored. “Strange,” said he, taking up a prayer-book with a peculiar binding, on which there was a curiously intertwisted figure in gilt. “That pattern has been in my thoughts and dreams for a week.”
“How so?”
“Why, I saw it in your hands last Sunday, and my eyes were drawn to it till its whole figure seemed to stamp itself on my mind. See! I can trace it from memory.” And, taking his cane, he traced the curiously involved figure on the carpet.
“And were your thoughts fixed on nothing better than that?”
“I was engaged in worship,” was the reply, with marked emphasis.
“I must take another book next time.”
“Do not. You will only force me to study another pattern.”