I raise my head and speak with a clouded brow and a complaining tone.
"The Brat has gone back to Oxford," I say, gloomily; "Bobby has gone to Hong-Kong, and Algy has gone to the dogs—or at least is going there as hard as he can!"
"To the dogs?" (with an accent of surprise and concern); "what do you mean? what has sent him there?"
"You had better ask Mrs. Zéphine," reply I, bitterly, thinking, with a lively exasperation, of the changed and demoralized Algy I had last seen—soured, headstrong, and unhinged.
"Zéphine!" (repeating the name with an accent of thorough astonishment), "what on earth can she have to say to it?"
"Ah, what?" reply I, with oracular spite; then, overcome with remorse at the thought of the way in which I was embittering the first moments of his return, I rebury my face in his shoulder.
"I will tell you about that to-morrow," I say; "to-day is a good day, and we will talk only of good things and of good people."
He does not immediately answer. My remark seems to have buried him in thought. Presently he shakes off his distraction and speaks again.
"And Barbara? how is she? She has not" (beginning to laugh)—"she has not gone to the dogs, I suppose!"
"No," say I, slowly, not thinking of what I am saying, but with my thoughts wandering off to the greatest and sorest of my afflictions, "not yet."