“Oh! do stop one moment. There are so many ‘thinks’ there. I’m quite bewildered among them all. Let’s breathe an instant. You think I want to make you think that I think. Yes, now I have it, I think. Pray go on.”
“Polite!” said Miss Vi, and turned toward Aunt Dinah.
“Well, no,” said William, for the first time laughing a little like himself; “it was not polite, but very rude and ill-bred, and I’m very sorry; and I assure you,” he continued more earnestly, “I should be very angry, if any one else had made the stupid speech that I have just made: and, really, I believe it is just this—you have been too patient with me, and allowed me to go on lecturing you like an old tutor—and—and—really, I’m certain I’ve been a horrid bore.”
Vi made no reply, but looked, and, no doubt, thought herself more ill-used for his apologies.
After tea she played industriously, having avowed a little cold, which prevented her singing. William had asked her. He turned over the leaves of a book, as he sat back in an elbow-chair, and Aunt Dinah was once more deep in her old box of letters, with her gold spectacles on.
They were as silent a party as could be fancied; more silent than at dinner. Still, the pleasant light of fire and candle—the handsome young faces and the kindly old one—and the general air of old-fashioned comfort that pervaded the apartment, made the picture pleasant; and the valses and the nigger ditties, with snatches of Verdi, and who knows what composer beside, made the air ring with a merry medley, which supplied the lack of conversation.
To William, with nothing but his book to amuse him, time moved slowly enough. But Violet had many things to think of; and one could see that her eyes saw other scenes and shapes far away, perhaps, from the music, and that she was reading to herself the romance that was unrolled within her pretty girlish head.
So prayers came, and William read the chapter; and I am afraid his thoughts wandered, and he felt a little sore and affronted, he could not tell why, for no one had ill-used him; and, when their devotions were over, Miss Vi took her candle, and bid grannie good-night, with an embrace and a kiss, and William with a nod and a cold little smile, as he stood beside the door, having opened it for her.
He was growing formal in spite of himself, and she quite changed. What heartless, cruel creatures these pretty girls are!
She had quite vanished up the stairs, and he still held the door-handle in his fingers, and stood looking up the vacant steps, and, as it were, listening to distant music. Then, with a little sigh, he suddenly closed the door, and sat down drowsily before the fire, and began to think that he ought to return to his Cambridge chambers, his books, and monastic life: and he thought how fortunate those fellows were, who, like Trevor—what a goose that fellow is!—were born to idleness, respect, and admiration.