"Will you not bid me also Godspeed?" Mr. Southard asked.
"You?"
"I have asked, and am likely to receive, a year's leave of absence from my congregation," he said. "I do not know how it will be; but I hope to go in the same regiment with Mr. Granger."
"Well," Margaret sighed as she climbed wearily up-stairs, "I have had one happy year. But could I have dreamed that Maurice Sinclair would be the one to reprove my weakness at such a time?".
Chapter X.
A Broken Circle.
Having made up his mind to go, Mr. Granger lost no time. He who had been the most leisurely of men, whose composure and deliberateness of manner had often given him the appearance of haughtiness, was now possessed by a spirit of ceaseless activity. His slow and dignified step became prompt, he spoke more quickly, his misty eyes cleared up, and a color glowed in his swarthy cheeks.
There was no more lounging on a sofa, and reading; no more theatre nor concert; no more lingering in picture-galleries, and looking about with that fastidious, dissatisfied expression of his till his eyes lit sparkling on something that pleased him; no more dreaming along, with a cigar in his mouth, under the trees at twilight. He was busy, happy, and full of life.
It did not take long to complete his arrangements. Like Madame Swetchine, he thought those obstacles trifling which were not insurmountable.
The family found themselves infected by his cheerfulness. Mr. Lewis's lugubrious visions of wooden arms and legs, and patches over the eye, he swept away with a laugh. The wistful glances, often dim with tears, with which the ladies looked at him, following his every step, listening to his every word, he chid more gently, and also more earnestly.