"You are a quick observer, Mary."
"The heart has its oracles as well as the head, uncle."
She spoke sadly, and John Campbell looked with a kindly curiosity at her.
He felt almost certain that she had suffered a keen disappointment, as
well as himself. "But she would die before she would make a complaint," he
thought, "and I may learn a lesson from her. It is a weak soul that is not
capable of its own consolation. She has evidently determined to make the
best of things beyond her sorting."
After a short silence, Mary slipped quietly from the room. John Campbell
scarcely noticed her departure. He had the heartache, and men of sixty
have it far worse than men of twenty. When their hopes fail, they have no
time left, often no ability left to renew them. To make the best of things
was all that now remained; and he was the more able to do this because of
Mary's promise to him. But it is always hard to feel in the evening that
our day's work has been unsuccessful, and that resignation, and not
success, must make the best of the hours remaining.
As he mused the storm, which had threatened all the afternoon, broke. The
swash and patter of the rain against the windows, and the moaning of the
trees on the lawn, made a dreary accompaniment to his melancholy musings.
It grew chill, and a footman entered, put a match to the laid fuel, and
lighted the gas. Then John Campbell made an effort to shake off the
influence which oppressed him. He laid down the ivory paper knife, which
he had been turning mechanically in his fingers, rose, and went to the
window. How dark it was! The dripping outlook made him shiver, and he
turned back to the slowly burning fire. But solitude and inaction became
unbearable. "Regretting never mended wrong; if I cannot get the best, I
can try for the second best. And perhaps the lad is not beyond reasoning
with." Then he rose, and with a decided air and step went straight to
Allan's room.