Droll statistics,
but sad and convincing to the simple David. His spirits failed him;
his aching heart turned cold. He withdrew from the gay circle, and sat
sadly with a book of prints before him, and turned the leaves
listlessly. In a pause of the conversation a sigh was heard in the
corner. They all looked round, and saw David all by himself, turning
over the leaves, but evidently not inspecting them.
A sort of flash of satirical curiosity went from eye to eye.
But tact abounded at one end of the room, if there was a dearth of it
at the other.
_La rusee sans le savoir_ made a sign to them all to take no
notice; at the same time she whispered: "Going to sea in a few days
for two years; the thought will return now and then." Having said this
with a look at her aunt, that, Heaven knows how, gave the others the
notion that it was to Mrs. Bazalgette she owed the solution of David's
fit of sadness, she glided easily into indifferent topics. So then the
others had a momentary feeling of pity for David. Miss Lucy noticed
this out of the tail of her eye.
That night David went to bed thoroughly wretched. He could not sleep,
so he got up and paced the deck of his room with a heavy heart. At
last, in his despair, he said, "I'll fire signals of distress." So he
sat down and took a sheet of paper, and fired: "Nothing has turned as
I expected. She treats me like a stranger. I seem to drop astern
instead of making any way. Here are three of us, I do believe, and all
seem preferred to your poor brother; and, indeed, the only thing that
gives me any hope is that she seems too kind to be in earnest, for it
is not in her angelic nature to be really unkind; and what have I
done? Eve, dear, such a change from what she was at Font Abbey, and
that happy evening when she came and drank tea with us, and lighted
our little garden up, and won your heart, that was always a little set
against her.
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