'It is perhaps but a sudden girlish fancy hers for that man Sleath. It may pass away and all yet be well.'
'Never for me, mother. And you think so meanly of me as to take that view of the matter? I would not and could not with my knowledge of the present seek to have the past over again, and never more can I look upon Ellinor Wellwood or think of her save as I would of the dead. The charm is broken, the flower has lost its fragrance, and the peach its bloom.'
'Why should the weakness or falsehood of one person—one person only—wreck the whole life of another?' asked his father, with some asperity. 'It should not be so.'
'The old and the young view these matters differently, father,' said Robert, gently.
'True. I have read that "in youth grief is a tempest which makes you ill; in old age it is only like a cold wind which adds a wrinkle to your face and one more white lock to the others. Yet there are people who can feed themselves on their grief till they grow fat on it."'
But arguments proved unavailing. The vicinity of Birkwoodbrae had become intolerable to Robert now, and he resolved that he would go far away from them and the pleasant birks of Invermay; and he openly announced his intention of becoming a soldier, adding that nothing would make him swerve from his purpose, as by that means he would be taken to other scenes and be under other influences.
'Most evil ones, I fear!' exclaimed the doctor, striking his hands together.
'Oh, my poor infatuated boy!' added his mother, while her tears fell hotly and fast, and his father started from the table on which the untasted dinner was spread, tore open his waistcoat as if he was suffocating, and paced about the room with impatient strides, his whole form agitated with a kind of convulsive agony that cut Robert to the soul, but did not make him swerve from his bitter purpose.
'Consider the society and profligacy you have to encounter—yea, such as even our ancestor, in the third volume of his Analecta, details when describing the schools of profanity in 1726.'
Then, after a time, finding that all his opposition was vain, he said, in a very broken voice,