CHAPTER XXVI.
The weather changed on the morrow.
Coming home at nightfall, Roy found Jessie standing at the western window, surveying sorrowfully the unfavorable aspect of the heavens.
"It will be very unpleasant travelling in the rain!" she remarked as he entered. "The sun went down behind a portentous bank of clouds. And the wind is veering to the storm-quarter."
It was evident that the possibility of a single day's delay made her restless and anxious.
"The signs portend nothing worse than April showers, I hope," he encouraged her to believe. "Or, should there be a steady rain, you will soon run out of it into the region of blue skies and milder airs. I see no reason for altering your arrangements. You will be sheltered and dry in the cars."
"True!" she answered, musingly, returning to her contemplation of the unpromising horizon.
She was perturbed, however, and unusually taciturn while they were at supper; dull and spiritless during the hour they spent together in the sitting-room; arousing herself with apparent effort to reply to his remarks, and rarely offering one of her own accord. Roy's attempts at cheerful conversation were less evenly sustained than was customary with him in her presence. It was not his intention that this last evening should be one of gloomy constraint, but it approximated this more nearly every moment. Both were abstracted, and each was unwilling that the other should discover the direction in which his and her thoughts were straying. So the pauses in the sluggish flow of talk became more and more frequent, until, at nine o'clock, Jessie arose, with a sigh of relief.