“I have to say good-bye, now,” said he, sadly. “I may see you all again within a week. It may be this is a good-bye for ever.”
He kissed her hand as he spoke, and turned to the lake, where his boat was lying.
“How amazed she’ll be to hear that she saw a letter--read it--held it in her hands,” muttered he, “but I’ll stake my life she’ll never doubt the fact when it is told to her by those who believe it.”
“You seem to be in rare spirits,” said Barnard when Calvert returned to the inn. “Have you proposed and been accepted?”
“Not exactly,” said the other, smiling, “but I have had a charming evening; one of those fleeting moments of that ‘vie de famille’ Balzac tells us are worth all our wild and youthful excesses.”
“Yes!” replied Barnard, scoffingly; “domesticity would seem to be your forte. Heaven help your wife, say I, if you ever have one.”
“You don’t seem to be aware how you disparage conjugal life, my good friend, when you speak of it as a thing in which men of _your_ stamp are the ornaments. It would be a sorry institution if its best requirements were a dreary temperament and a disposition that mistakes moodiness for morality.”
“Good-night; I have had enough,” said the other, and left the room.
“What a pity to leave such a glorious spot on such a morning,” said Calvert, as he stood waiting while the post-horses were being harnessed. “If we had but been good boys, as we might have been--that is, if _you_ had not fallen into matrimony, and _I_ into a quarrel--we should have such a day’s fishing here! Yonder, where you see the lemon-trees hanging over the rock, in the pool underneath there are some twelve and fourteen ‘pounders,’ as strong as a good-size pike; and then we’d have grilled them under the chestnut-trees, and talked away, as we’ve done scores of times, of the great figure we were to make--I don’t know when or how, but some time and in some wise--in the world; astonishing all our relations, and putting to utter shame and confusion that private tutor at Dorking who would persist in auguring the very worst of us.”
“Is that the bill that you are tearing up? Let me see it What does he charge for that Grignolino wine and those bad cigars?” broke in Barnard.
“What do I know or care?” said Calvert, with a saucy laugh. “If you possessed a schoolboy’s money-box with a slit in it to hold your savings, there would be some sense in looking after the five-franc pieces you could rescue from a cheating landlord, and add to your store; but when you know in your heart that you are never the richer nor the better of the small economies that are only realised at the risk of an apoplexy and some very profane expressions, my notion is, never mind them--never fret about them.”