"I am afraid the result is a foregone conclusion," remarked the colonel.
The subject was one Mrs. Drelincourt did not care to pursue.
"And must your visit really come to an end in the course of a few days?" she presently asked. "Cannot we persuade you to favor us with your company for a fortnight longer?"
"I'm afraid I have no option in the matter. Weeks ago I promised my sister to be with her on the twelfth of this month, and were I to break my word, I should render myself liable to pains and penalties without number."
"But we shall have you with us again later in the season?"
"I certainly hope so. It won't be my fault if you don't."
"I cannot tell you how grateful I feel for the change which your visit--for I can set it down to nothing else--has wrought in Felix. Not for years--nay, scarcely since our marriage--has he seemed so cheerful, so free from care, so little given to brooding over his experiments and shutting himself up among his books, as during the three weeks you have been with us."
"Ah ha! I do take some little credit to myself for having coaxed our snail out of his shell, for having wheedled our bookworm out of his seclusion; and it must be your care after I'm gone, dear Mrs. Drelincourt, to see that he doesn't revert to his hermit-like ways."
"I am greatly afraid that when your enlivening presence is no longer here, everything will go on precisely as it did before your arrival."
"It is always wise to hope for the best. In any case, I won't fail to come and stir up Felix again in the course of the autumn."
Before more could be said, Marian, closely followed by Walter, each of them carrying a croquet mallet, made their appearance at one of the long windows, which, this balmy afternoon, stood wide open.
"Colonel Winslow," said the flushed and happy looking girl, "we want you to come and decide a point of the game for us about which we can't agree."
Left alone, Mrs. Drelincourt resumed her needlework. Her thoughts were busy with what had just passed between the colonel and herself.
"Yes, Felix has been a changed man from the day of his friend's arrival three weeks ago. And yet, there is something in the change which I fail to understand, and which, for that very reason, dulls the edge of my happiness. To me--but I may be fanciful--there seems something feverish and unreal about his gaiety. His mirth has an air of being assumed for the occasion; in his laughter there is an echo of mockery; it is as though he were laughing at himself for finding anything worth laughing about.