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Updated: June 7, 2025
And all laughed and drank; while Elsley's dark face looked in at the doorway, and half turned to escape. Handsome lady-like Mrs. Owen, bustling out of the kitchen with a supper-tray, ran full against him, and uttered a Welsh scream.
"Do not speak so!" said Valencia, with her Irish impetuous generosity; "you are unjust to yourself. We have watched you, felt for you, honoured you, even when we differed from you" What more she would have said, I know not, but at that moment Elsley's peevish voice was heard calling over the stairs, "Lucia! Lucia?" "Oh dear!
Unfortunately, as will appear hereafter, Elsley's especial bêtes noirs were this very Wynd and his inseparable companion, Naylor, who happened to be not only the best men of the set, but Mellot's especial friends. Both were Rugby men, now reading for their degree.
And so I am, Claude!" All which did not increase Elsley's love to the Major, conscious as he was that Lucia's confidence was a thing which he had not wholly; and which it would be very dangerous to him for any other man to have at all. Into the drawing-room they went. Frank Headley had been asked up to tea; and he stood at the piano, listening to Valencia's singing.
Valencia was half inclined to laugh, knowing Elsley's petulance and vanity: but the impossibility of guessing a cause kept her quiet. Major Campbell stood for full five minutes; not as one astounded, but as one in deep and anxious thought. "What can be the matter, mon Saint Père?" asked she at last, to break the silence.
In fact, the two young rogues, having no respect whatsoever for genius, perhaps because they had each of them a little genius of their own, made a butt of the poet, as soon as they found out that he was afraid of them. But worse bêtes noirs than either Wynd or Naylor were on their way to fill up the cup of Elsley's discomfort.
"Who am I, that any one should be afraid of me, unless they have done something wrong?" So, with his dark suspicions roused, he watched intently every word and every tone of Elsley's to his wife; and here he came to a more unpleasant conclusion still.
It actually was so: but Elsley's brain was weak and wandering; and he was soon silent; and motionless so long, that Tom opened the door and looked in anxiously. He was sitting on a chair, his hands fallen on his lap, the tears running down his face. "Well?" asked Tom smilingly, not noticing the tears; "how goes on the opera? I heard through the door the orchestra tuning for the prelude."
"This is a sad dawning for the day of my triumph!" thought Frank, who longed to pour out his heart to her on a thousand very different matters: but he was content; it was enough for him that she could tell him all, and confide in him; a truer sign of affection than any selfish love-making; and he asked, and answered, with such tenderness and thoughtfulness for poor Lucia, with such a deep comprehension of Elsley's character, pitying while he blamed, that he won his reward at last.
Tom slipped out that afternoon, paid Elsley's pittance of rent at his old lodgings; bought him a few necessary articles, and lent him, without saying anything, a few more. Elsley sat all day as one in a dream, moaning to himself at intervals, and following Tom vacantly with his eyes, as he moved about the room.
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