“Carpet dances are always a mistake,” observed Captain Beverley, rousing himself with some effort to join in the conversation. “People talk rubbish about their being more ‘enjoyable’—what an odious word ‘enjoyable’ is!—than any others, but it’s all nonsense. They take more out of one than twenty balls.”
“I don’t think last night could have taken much out of you, Arthur. You danced so little—not half as much as to-night,” said Alys, thoughtlessly.
“No,” said Mr Cheviott, markedly, “not a quarter as much, I should say.”
Arthur said nothing, and Alys, feeling rather guilty, tried to lead the conversation into safer channels. In this she might not have succeeded had not her brother done his best to help her. But Arthur remained silent, and all three were glad when at last the long drive was over and the carriage turned in at the Romary gates.
“Good-night, Alys,” said Mr Cheviott at once, and Alys obediently kissed him and said good-night.
“Good-night, Arthur,” she said, lingeringly. She felt so sorry for Arthur somehow; she would so have liked to have seen him by himself for a few minutes.
“Good-night, dear,” he replied, but without any of his usual sunny brightness. And Alys felt sure she heard him sigh, as, in accordance with Mr Cheviott’s suggestion that they might as well have a cigar before going to bed, he followed his cousin into the library.
“Laurence is going to give him a ‘talking to,’ as the boys say,” thought Alys, as she went slowly up-stairs. “And what has he done to deserve it, and why should he submit to it? Unless, indeed, he is not in earnest, and only amusing himself, and that Laurence knows it—but I’m sure it is not that. I cannot understand Arthur. I never before thought him wanting in spirit.”
But the more she reflected, the more puzzled she grew, so Alys, not being deficient in common sense, decided that she could do no good by sitting up and tiring herself. She undressed and went to bed, and to sleep; but, though not a principal in the drama which was being enacted in her sight, her dreams that night were scarcely less disturbed and troubled than those of another even more intensely interested spectator, eight or nine miles off. On the whole, Lilias’s sleep that night was far more peaceful than that of her sister Mary, or of Alys Cheviott.
For Lilias’s heart was full of faith and hope, and to such dreamers there come no uneasy visions.