"We come to no definite results by talking in this way, Roland. When you get to singing snatches of song I may as well be quiet. And yet I am so unhappy about you. O Roland! Roland! my dear, dear brother, what can I do for you?"
She covered her face with her hands, and Roland took them away with gentle force. "Elizabeth, do not cry for me. I am not worth a tear. Darling, I will do anything you want me to do."
"If I get Robert to give you a desk in the bank?"
"Well, love, anything but that. I really cannot bear the confinement. I should die of consumption; besides, I have a moral weakness, Elizabeth, that I am bound to consider--there are times, dear, when I get awfully mixed and cannot help
"'Confounding the difference 'twixt _meum_ and _tuum_ By kindly converting it all into _suum_.'"
"O Roland, I really do not know what you are fit for!"
"If I had been born three or four centuries ago I could have been a knight-errant or a troubadour. But alas! in these days the knight-errants go to the Stock Exchange and the troubadours write for the newspapers. I am not fitted to wrestle with the wild beasts of the money market; I would rather go to Spain and be a matador."
"Roland, here comes Robert. Do try and talk like a man of ordinary intelligence. Robert wants to like you--wants to help you if you will let him."
"Yes, in his way. I want to be helped in my own way. Good-evening, Robert! I am glad you were not caught in the rain."
The grave face brightened to the charm of the young man, and then for an hour Roland delighted his sister by his sensible consideration, by his patient attention to some uninteresting details, by his prudence in speaking of the future; so that Robert said confidentially to his wife that night:
"Roland is a delightful young man. There must be some niche he can fill with honour. I wonder that Caroline could resist his attentions. Yet she told me to-day that she had refused him twice."
"Caroline is moved by her intellect, not by her heart. Also, she is very Vere-de-Vereish, and she has set her mark for a lord, at least."
"Nonsense! Going into the army means, for Roland, going into every possible temptation and expense--that would not do. But he ought to be away from this little town. He will be making mischief if he cannot find it ready-made."