During the week Martelli and I had been little together. My mind had been too much employed with hopes and fears of its own to suffer me to remark him attentively; but I had noticed that he had been to the full as abstracted as I. But his abstraction was of a gloomy order. His dark eyes, his contracted brow, his set lips, proclaimed the sullenness of his thoughts.
I attributed his manner to my neglect of him, and to his resentment at being invited to a position which had been despoiled of its duties. I must confess my love may have impaired my politeness. I was no longer the attentive host, solicitous of his comfort, and on the qui vive to remove any unpleasant thoughts which his position would inspire, and which his language, indeed, would sometimes hint. But I could easily excuse my neglect, if neglect it were. It was not to be supposed that I could regard him altogether in the light of a guest. Or granting that I chose to do so, his long stay in my house would have justified a mitigation of the severe politeness which it would have been proper to extend to a man whose sojourn was brief. "Surely," I remember thinking, "under the circumstances, he should have sense enough at this time of day not to expect from me the anxious attention which I readily practised at the beginning of our acquaintance. I have fulfilled conditions which he could not have anticipated. I have suffered him to share my home as though he were a joint proprietor; and I have tacitly conceded every privilege which I could with justice to myself yield to him. I cannot consider him ill-used because I choose to absent myself in the company of Mrs. Fraser, in preference to spending my time with him. He no doubt frets and fumes at my love as indiscreet—as menacing his situation, and as illustrative of weakness in a nature that had at the onset promised a vigorous adherence to its original schemes. But surely," I thought, "it will be time enough for him to manifest anger when he shall have been told that I have abandoned my ambitious resolutions and no longer require his counsels."
On reaching home after that walk I have told you of with Mrs. Fraser, I found Martelli seated on the lawn. I joined him. He rose at my approach. His politeness was punctilious in proportion to his temper.
"Pray keep your seat," said I. "How have you been passing the afternoon?"
"In reading," he answered with a shrug.
"You say that reproachfully. You think I should be reading too?"
"Are you not master of your own actions, Sir?"
"Undoubtedly. I shall resume my reading by-and-by."