Marian came into the room in the midst of this conversation. She was very pale, and her eyes had a dull, heavy look. The bad news in Gilbert's letter had distressed her even more than he had anticipated.
"My darling," he said tenderly, looking down at the changed face, with her cold hand clasped in his own, "how ill you are looking! I fear I made my letter too dismal, and that it frightened you."
"Oh no, no. I am very sorry you should have this bad fortune, Gilbert, that is all."
"There is nothing which I do not hope to repair, dear. The losses are not more than I can stand. All that I take to heart is the separation from you, Marian."
"I am not worth so much regret," she said, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her hands clasping and unclasping each other nervously.
"Not worth so much regret, Marian!" he exclaimed. "You are all the world to me; the beginning and end of my universe."
She looked a little brighter by-and-by, when her lover had done his best to cheer her with hopeful talk, which cost him no small effort in the depressed state of his mind. The day went by very slowly, although it was the last which those two were to spend together until Gilbert Fenton's return. It was a hopelessly wet day, with a perpetual drizzling rain and a leaden-gray sky; weather which seemed to harmonise well enough with the pervading gloom of Gilbert's thoughts as he stood by the fire, leaning against an angle of the mantelpiece, and watching Marian's needle moving monotonously in and out of the canvas.
The Captain, who led an easy comfortable kind of life at all times, was apt to dispose of a good deal of his leisure in slumber upon such a day as this. He sat down in his own particular easy-chair, dozing behind the shelter of a newspaper, and lulled agreeably by the low sound of Gilbert and Marian's conversation.
So the quiet hours went by, overshadowed by the gloom of that approaching separation. After dinner, when they had returned to the drawing-room, and Captain Sedgewick had refreshed his intellectual powers with copious draughts of strong tea, he began to talk of Marian's childhood, and the circumstances which had thrown her into his hand.
"I don't suppose my little girl ever showed you her mother's jewel-case, did she, Gilbert?" he asked.