She looked up at him, and exclaimed--'Is anything the matter?'
'Nothing to signify,' he said; 'I was only waiting for your mother. I have got into a mess, that is all.'
'I am sorry,' began Amy, there resting in the doubt whether she might inquire further, and intending not to burthen him with her company, any longer than till she reached the house door; but Guy went on,-'No, you have no occasion to be sorry; it is all my own fault; at least, if I was clear how it is my fault, I should not mind it so much. It is that ball. I am sure I had not the least notion any one would care whether I was there or not.'
'I am sure we missed you very much.'
'You are all so kind; beside, I belong in a manner you; but what could it signify to any one else? And here I find that I have vexed every one.'
'Ah!' said Amy, 'mamma said she was afraid it would give offence.'
'I ought to have attended to her. It was a fit of self-will in managing myself,' said Guy, murmuring low, as if trying to find the real indictment; 'yet I thought it a positive duty; wrong every way.'
'What has happened?' said Amy, turning back with him, though she had reached the door.
'Why, the first person I met was Mr. Gordon; and he spoke like your father, half in joke, and I thought entirely so; he said something about all the world being in such a rage, that I was a bold man to venture into Broadstone. Then, while I was at Mr. Lascelles', in came Dr. Mayerne. 'We missed you at the dinner,' he said; 'and I hear you shirked the ball, too.' I told him how it was, and he said he was glad that was all, and advised me to go and call on Colonel Deane and explain. I thought that the best way--indeed, I meant it before, and was walking to his lodgings when Maurice de Courcy met me. 'Ha!' he cries out, 'Morville! I thought at least you would have been laid up for a month with the typhus fever! As a friend, I advise you to go home and catch something, for it is the only excuse that will serve you. I am not quite sure that it will not be high treason for me to be seen speaking to you.' I tried to get at the rights of it, but he is such a harum-scarum fellow there was no succeeding. Next I met Thorndale, who only bowed and passed on the other side of the street--sign enough how it was with Philip; so I thought it best to go at once to the Captain, and get a rational account of what was the matter.'