'Dear old Guardsman! I'm so glad that he took him. I didn't know that he was in. I wonder what makes me so nervous to-day. It surely cannot be going to rain, or is there an earthquake imminent? I believe in presentiments, and if the day is like the others we have had this year, I never shall do so again. There goes another clap of thunder!'
That morning was spent by Pollie Devereux, it must be confessed, in a manner so aimless, so inconsistent with her mother's fixed principles on the score of regular employment for young women, that it drew forth more than one mild reproach from that kindly matron.
'My dear, I can't bear to see you going about from one room to another without settling to anything. Can you not sit down to your work, or practise, or go on with some historical reading, or your French, in which Bertram says you are making such progress? You're wasting your time sadly.'
'Mother!' said her daughter, facing round upon her with mock defiance, 'could you sit down to your work if there was going to be a shipwreck, or a cyclone, or a great battle fought on the plain? Though, really, you good old mother, I think you would, and thread your needle till the Roundheads marched in at the outer gate, as they did in "The Lay of Britomart," or took down the slip-rails, as it would be in our case. But do you know, there is an electrical current in the air, I am sure, and so I, being of a more excitable nature, do really feel so aroused and excited, that I can't keep quiet. Something is going to happen.'
'Now, my dearest Pollie, are not you letting your imagination run away with you? What can happen? There may be a little wind and rain—what the shepherds call "a nice storm"—but nothing else, I fear.'
'"Something wicked this way comes,"' chanted Pollie, putting herself into a dramatic attitude. 'See how dark it is growing! Look at the lightning! Oh, dear, what a flash! And down comes the rain at last—in earnest, too.'
'The rain will have to be very earnest, my dear,' said Mrs. Devereux, 'before poor Corindah feels the benefit of it—though that certainly is a heavy shower. Early in the season too; this is only the 8th of February. There is the lunch-bell. Come along, my dear. A little lunch will do you good.'
'How wet poor Bertram will be!' said Pollie, pityingly. 'He said we couldn't have storms here.'