But there was welcome in her tone. Some thing in his pleasant face, in his keen glance, in his way of shaking hands even, seemed to dispel the cloudy atmosphere of dejection and gloom in which she had been breathing.
“I should have written yesterday to tell you I was coming,” he replied,“but till to-day I was not quite sure that I could make it out. My coming again so soon will not annoy Colonel Methvyn, will it?”
“Oh! dear no; it will please him very much,” she answered heartily. “I was going to write to you this afternoon to ask if you could come again some day soon in time to take papa a drive. He is nervous about going without you; but I am sure going out the other day did him good. Could you go with him to-day?”
“I could easily,” replied Mr. Guildford. “I am not in any hurry; but I hardly think the day is suitable. I mean the weather. It is a good deal colder; the wind is in the east. I noticed it this morning, and some how it made me feel fidgety about Colonel Methvyn. I grew so anxious to know that his drive the day before yesterday had done him no harm that I came to see.”
“It was very kind of you,” said Cicely gratefully. “I think you will find him very well. So the wind is in the east, is it? In June too, what a shame! Perhaps that is why I have felt so cross all day.”
“Do you often feel cross?” asked Mr. Guildford smiling.
“I don’t know. I used not; but lately I think I have been getting into a bad habit of feeling so from no particular cause. At least,” she hesitated a little, “from no new cause.”
“You mean that there would have been as much excuse for you formerly as there is now, but that it is only lately you have yielded to the irritating influences.”
“No,” said Cicely, laughing. “I don’t think there is now or ever has been any excuse for me. But somehow I don’t think life is as interesting as it used to seem.”
“That is not an uncommon phase of youthful experience,” he said drily. “Don’t you fancy sometimes that nobody understands or sympathises with you?”