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By this time good Mark had talked himself out of breath; and Elsley flushing up, as of old, at a little praise, began to stammer an excuse. "His nerves were so weak, and his spirits so broken with late troubles." "My dear sir, that's the very reason I want you to come. A bottle of port will cure the nerves, and a pleasant chat the spirits.
The lark's upward flight was over; and Elsley heard him come quivering down from heaven's gate, fluttering, sinking, trilling self-complacently, springing aloft in one bar, only to sink lower in the next, and call more softly to his brooding mate below; till, worn out with his ecstasy, he murmured one last sigh of joy, and sank into the nest.
Major Campbell was sitting, Elsley could see, in his shirt sleeves, cigar in mouth, bent over his microscope: but instead of the unexpected prim voice, he heard a very gay and arch one answer, "Is that a proper way in which to come peeping into an old bachelor's sanctuary, ma'am? Go away this moment, till I make myself fit to be seen." Valencia shut the door again, laughing.
Elsley had wandered, he hardly knew how or whither, for his calling to Mellot was the merest blind, stumbling over rocks, bruising himself against tree-trunks, to this wall. He knew they must pass it. He waited for them, and had his reward.
One thing, indeed, troubled Elsley, that Claude was his only companion; for Valencia avoided carefully any more tête-
"Come to do myself the honour of calling on you, Mr. Vavasour. I am sorry to see you so poorly; I hope our Whitbury air will set all right." "You mistake me, sir; my name is Briggs!" said Elsley, without turning his head; but a moment after he looked up angrily. "Mr. Armsworth? I beg your pardon, sir; but what brings you here?
Campbell, like other men, had his faults: and his were those of a man wrapped up in a pure and stately, but an austere and lonely creed, distrusted with the world in all its forms, and looking down upon men in general nearly as much as Thurnall did. So he set down Elsley for a bad man, to whom he was forced by hard circumstances to behave as if he were a good one.
Impulsive men like Elsley, especially when their self-respect and certainty of their own position is not very strong, have instinctively a defiant fear of the strong, calm, self-contained man, especially if he has seen the world; and Elsley set down Major Campbell as a proud, sarcastic fellow, before whom he must be at the pains of being continually on his guard.
Do be rational! Ancrum sprang up, hobbled with unusual alacrity across the room, and, laying hold of David, made a feint of ejecting his visitor. 'You get along and leave me to my wittles! he said with the smile of a schoolboy; 'I don't spy on you when you're at your meals. David crossed his arms. 'I shall have to send Lucy down every morning to housekeep with Mrs. Elsley, he said firmly.
Little he thought that three doors off from him, Valencia was sitting up the whole night through, vainly trying to quiet Lucia, who refused to undress, and paced up and down her room, hour after hour in wild misery, which I have no skill to detail. What, then, had become of Elsley? And whence had he written the fatal letter?
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