He was gone, and she rushed homewards, stumbling over every pebble in her path.
"Is anything the matter with Leo?" said Maud, the next day. "She is in such an odd mood; and she has scarcely left her room since morning."
"She feels the going away, I think," replied Sybil, not ill-pleased to say it, for she was smarting beneath a fresh instance of her other sister's callousness. "We had a talk yesterday, and I saw she was taking it dreadfully to heart."
"Rather absurd of Leo. She was ready enough to go once; and she can't be as much attached to the place as we are, who have never been away from it;" and Maud looked aggrieved, as people do when others are accredited with finer feelings than they themselves can boast of. "Paul is low to-day, too, but I believe it is lumbago. I only hope it is, and not another attack of fever coming on."
"That would be very inconvenient, certainly," rejoined Sybil, gravely. It struck her that there was not much sympathy for the sufferer in either case. "What makes you think it is lumbago?"
"He has been sitting over the fire for hours, doing nothing. When I asked him to come and look at these plans, he said another time would do. And you know how he is always ready to look at plans, or do anything I wish."
She passed on, and at the same moment Leonore appeared.
"There you are!" cried Sybil gaily. "Come along, and be sociable. You have been a most unsociable little creature all day. Now then, aren't you coming?"
But Leo was not coming. Obviously she was disconcerted at sight of her sister, and shook her head as though vexed at being accosted.
"Nonsense! Don't go hiding yourself again," resumed Sybil. "What's the use of moping? And it doesn't make it any pleasanter for the rest of us that Paul is in the dumps in one room, and you in another. We are none too cheerful without that."
"In the library. Over the fire. So Maud says, and declares he has lumbago. I don't believe it. He simply doesn't want to be bothered with her and her eternal 'plans'."
"Go and look for yourself if you doubt Maud's word. Why? Do you want him?"
But Leo threw her a strange look, a look of such bitter, ironical meaning, that she appended hastily; "You are not such a little fool as to be worrying yourself over those two and their affairs? Maud won't thank you if you do. She is rather put out as it is, because I hinted that you took to heart our going more than she did. I didn't _say_ so, you know--but I should, if she had gone on much longer. However, she went off to Paul."