At last, then, there was news to be relied on! At last there was a prospect of seeing her! Blanche was radiant with happiness, Arnold was in high spirits for the first time since his return from Baden.
Sir Patrick tried hard to catch the infection of gayety from his young friends; but, to his own surprise, not less than to theirs, the effort proved fruitless. With the tide of events turning decidedly in his favor—relieved of the necessity of taking a doubtful journey to Scotland; assured of obtaining his interview with Anne in a few days’ time—he was out of spirits all through the evening.
“Still down on our luck!” exclaimed Arnold, as he and his host finished their last game of billiards, and parted for the night. “Surely, we couldn’t wish for a more promising prospect than our prospect next week?”
Sir Patrick laid his hand on Arnold’s shoulder.
“Let us look indulgently together,” he said, in his whimsically grave way, “at the humiliating spectacle of an old man’s folly. I feel, at this moment, Arnold, as if I would give every thing that I possess in the world to have passed over next week, and to be landed safely in the time beyond it.”
“But why?”
“There is the folly! I can’t tell why. With every reason to be in better spirits than usual, I am unaccountably, irrationally, invincibly depressed. What are we to conclude from that? Am I the object of a supernatural warning of misfortune to come? Or am I the object of a temporary derangement of the functions of the liver? There is the question. Who is to decide it? How contemptible is humanity, Arnold, rightly understood! Give me my candle, and let’s hope it’s the liver.”