“Married, indeed! It’s probably just this—Vane Trevor has come here with a long foolish exhortation from Doctor—what’s his name?—Sprague—and upset the young man a little, and perhaps agitated him. He’ll be quite a different person to-morrow.”
And so indeed it proved. Whatever his secret feelings, William Maubray was externally a great deal more like himself. In the state which follows such a shock as William had experienced before the monotony of sadness sets in, there is sometimes an oscillation of spirits from extreme depression to an equally morbid hilarity, the symbol of excitement only. So in a long ride, which William took with the young lady to-day, accompanied by his pupil, who, on his pony, entertained himself by pursuing the sheep on the hill side, Miss Clara found him very agreeable, and also ready at times to philosophise, eloquently and sadly, in the sort of Byronic vein into which bitter young lovers will break. So the sky was brightening, and William, who suspected nothing of the peculiar interest with which his varying moods were observed, was yet flattered by the gradual but striking improvement of his relations, accepted the interest displayed by the ladies as a feminine indication of compassion and appreciation, and expressed a growing confidence and gratitude, the indirect expressions of which they, perhaps, a little misapprehended.
In the evening Mrs. Kincton Knox called again for the “Lord of Burleigh,” not being fertile in resource—Miss Clara turned her chair toward the fire, and with her feet on a boss, near the fender, leaned back, with a handscreen in her fingers, and listened.
“That is what I call poetry!” exclaimed the matron with the decision of a brigadier, and a nod of intimidating approbation, toward William, “and so charmingly read!”
“I’m afraid Miss Knox must have grown a little tired of it,” suggested William.
“One can never tire of poetry so true to nature,” answered Miss Clara.
“She’s all romance, that creature,” confidentially murmured her mamma, with a compassionating smile.
“What is it?” inquired Miss Clara.
“You’re not to hear, but we were saying, weren’t we, Mr. Herbert? that she has not a particle of romance in her nature,” replied her mamma with her gloomy pleasantry.
“No romance certainly, and I’m afraid no common sense either,” replied the young lady naively.