Such was the compelling effect of Thelma's stainless mind reflected in her pure face, on the different dispositions of all the young men; and she, perfectly unconscious of it, smiled at them, and conversed gaily,--little knowing as she talked, in her own sweet and unaffected way, that the most profound resolutions were being formed, and the most noble and unselfish deeds, were being planned in the souls of her listeners,--all forsooth! because one fair, innocent woman had, in the clear, grave glances of her wondrous sea-blue eyes, suddenly made them aware of their own utter unworthiness. Macfarlane, meditatively watching the girl from under his pale eyelashes, thought of Mr. Dyceworthy's matrimonial pretensions, with a humorous smile hovering on his thin lips.
"Ma certes! the fellow has an unco' gude opeenion o' himself," he mused. "He might as well offer his hand in marriage to the Queen while he's aboot it,--he wad hae just as muckle chance o' acceptance."
Meanwhile, Errington, having learned all he wished to know concerning Sigurd, was skillfully drawing out old Olaf Güldmar, and getting him to give his ideas on things in general, a task in which Lorimer joined.
"So you don't think we're making any progress nowadays?" inquired the latter with an appearance of interest, and a lazy amusement in his blue eyes as he put the question.
"Progress!" exclaimed Güldmar. "Not a bit of it! It is all a going backward; it may not seem apparent, but it is so. England, for instance, is losing the great place she once held in the world's history,--and these things always happen to all nations when money becomes more precious to the souls of the people than honesty and honor. I take the universal wide-spread greed of gain to be one of the worst signs of the times,--the forewarning of some great upheaval and disaster, the effects of which no human mind can calculate. I am told that America is destined to be the dominating power of the future,--but I doubt it! Its politics are too corrupt,--its people live too fast, and burn their candle at both ends, which is unnatural and most unwholesome; moreover, it is almost destitute of Art in its highest forms,--and is not its confessed watchward 'the almighty Dollar?' And such a country as that expects to arrogate to itself the absolute sway of the world? I tell you, no--ten thousand times no! It is destitute of nearly everything that has made nations great and all-powerful in historic annals,--and my belief is that what, has been, will be again,--and that what has never been, will never be."