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Yet Wynd had sentiment in his way, though he took good care never to show it Elsley; could repeat Tennyson from end to end; spouted the Mort d'Arthur up hill and down dale, and chaunted rapturously, "Come into the garden, Maud!" while he expressed his opinion of Maud's lover in terms more forcible than delicate.
Another minute, and the blue glare filled the sky once more: but no black Titan towered before it now. The storm had leapt Llanberris pass, and all around Elsley was one howling chaos of cloud, and rain, and blinding flame. He turned and fled again. By the sensation of his feet, he knew that he was going up hill; and if he but went upward, he cared not whither he went.
An awful place it always is; and Elsley saw it at an awful time, as the glare unveiled below him a sea of rock-waves, all sharp on edge, pointing toward him on every side: or rather one wave-crest of a sea; for twenty yards beyond, all sloped away into the abysmal dark. Terrible were those rocks below; and ten times more terrible as seen through the lurid glow of his distempered brain.
If a man had drunk too much wine in his house, he would have simply kept his eye on him afterwards, as a fool who did not know when he had his "quotum;" but laudanum drinking, involving, too, the breaking of an engagement, which, well managed, might have been of immense use to Elsley, was a very different matter.
She has Valencia all to herself; and Elsley, in spite of the dark fancies over which he has been brooding, is better behaved, on the whole, than usual. He has escaped so he considers escaped from Campbell, above all from Thurnall. From himself, indeed, he has not escaped; but the company of self is, on the whole, more pleasant to him than otherwise just now.
"They are my braces, I suppose, of course," said Scoutbush, who never understood a joke about himself, though he liked one about other people; while Elsley, who hated all jokes, made no answer at least none worth recording. In fact, as the reader may have discovered, Elsley, save tête-
But Elsley had vanished into a chamber bestrewn with plaids, pipes, hob-nail boots, fishing-tackle, mathematical books, scraps of ore, and the wild confusion of a gownsman's den. "The party is taken ill with a poem," said Wynd. Naylor stuck out his heavy under-lip and glanced sidelong at his friend. "With something worse, Ned. That man's eye and voice had something uncanny in them.
Elsley was going to say something in return; but his guest turned the conversation as fast as he could. "And now, I know you want to be busy, though you are too civil to confess it; and I must be with that old fool Tardrew at ten, to settle accounts: he'll scold me if I do not the precise old pedant just as if I was his own child. Good-bye."
Elsley blushed, for his conscience smote him a little at that word "worthy," and muttered some commonplace civility in return. Valencia saw it, and attributing it to his usual awkwardness, drew off the conversation to herself. "Really, Major Campbell! You bring in Mr. Vavasour, and let me walk behind as I can; and then let me sit three whole minutes in your house without deigning to speak to me!"
Oh no; Elsley was at Lord Scoutbush's service, of course, and had really nothing to do. So out they went. "Charming old pigeon-hole it is," said its owner, "I have not seen it since I went into the Guards. Campbell says it's a shame of me, and so it is one, I suppose; but how beautiful you have made the garden look!"
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