But Arnest shook his head, remarking, as he so—"I would rather let things remain as they are. At least, I cannot stoop to any humiliating overtures for a reconciliation. When Marston outraged my feelings so wantonly, I wrote him a pretty warm expression of my sentiments in regard to his conduct. This gave him mortal offence. I do not now remember what I wrote, but nothing, certainly, to have prevented his coming forward and apologizing for his conduct; but he did not choose to do this, and there the matter rests. I cannot recall the angry rebuke I gave him, for it was no doubt just."
"A man who writes a letter in a passion, and afterwards forgets what he has written," said Mr. Wellford, "may be sure that he has said what his sober reason cannot approve. If you could have the letter you then sent before you now, I imagine that you would no longer wonder that Marston was offended."
"That is impossible; without doubt, he burned my note the moment he received it."
Mr. Wellford tried in vain to induce Arnest to consent to forget what was past; but he affirmed that this was impossible, and that he had no wish to renew an acquaintance with his old friend.
About the same time that this interview took place, Marston was alone, thinking with sad and softened feelings of the past. The letter of Arnest was before him; he had turned it over by accident.
"He could not have been himself when he wrote this," he thought. It was the first time he had permitted himself to think so. "My words must have stung him severely, lightly as I uttered them, and with no intention to wound. This matter ought not to have gone on so long. Friends are not so plentiful that we may carelessly cast those we have tried and proved aside. He has many excellent qualities."
Pride came quickly, with many suggestions about self-respect, and what every man owed to himself.
"He owes it to himself to be just to others," Marston truly thought. "Was I just in failing to apologize to my friend, notwithstanding this offensive letter? No, I was not; for his action did not exonerate me from the responsibility of mine. Ah, me! How passion blinds us!"
After musing for some time, Marston drew towards him a sheet of paper, and, taking up a pen, wrote:
"MY DEAR SIR:—What I ought to have done years ago, I do now, and that is, offer you a sincere apology for light words thoughtlessly spoken, but which I ought not to have used, as they were calculated to wound, and, I am grieved to think, did wound. But for your note, which I enclose, I should have made this apology the moment I had an opportunity. But its peculiar tenor, I then felt, precluded me from doing so. I confess that I erred in letting my feelings blind my cooler judgment.
"Your old friend, MARSTON.
"To Mr. Herbert Arnest."