“You’d not do anything so rash and inconsiderate?”
“Don’t provoke me, that’s all. You are always telling me you know the Calverts, their hot-headedness, their passionate warmth, and so on. I leave it to yourself, is it wise to push me further?”
“May I show you a letter I received yesterday morning, in reply to one of mine?”
“Then I’ll not read it. I tell you for the last time, I’ll not be cheated into this discussion. I don’t desire to have it said of me some fine morning, You talked of the man that you lived with on terms of intimacy. You chummed with him, and yet you told stories of him.”
“If you but knew the difficulty of the position in which you have placed me--”
“I know at least the difficulty in which you have placed _me_, and I am resolved not to incur it. Have I given to you Sophy’s letter to read?” said he with a changed voice. “I must fetch it out to you and let you see all that she says of her future happiness.” And thus, by a sudden turn, he artfully engaged her in recollections of Rocksley, and all the persons and incidents of a remote long ago!
When Loyd returned with the girls to the house, Calvert soon saw that he had not spoken to them on the altercation of the morning--a reserve which he ungenerously attributed to the part Loyd himself filled in the controversy. The two met with a certain reserve; but which, however felt and understood by each, was not easily marked by a spectator. Florence, however, saw it, with the traditional clearness of an invalid. She read what healthier eyes never detect She saw that the men had either quarrelled, or were on the brink of a quarrel, and she watched them closely and narrowly. This was the easier for her, as at meal times she never came to table, but lay on a sofa, and joined in the conversation at intervals.
Oppressed by the consciousness of what had occurred in the morning, and far less able to conceal his emotions or master them than his companion, Loyd was disconcerted and ill at ease: now answering at cross-purposes, now totally absorbed in his own reflections. As Calvert saw this, it encouraged him to greater efforts to be agreeable. He could, when he pleased, be a most pleasing guest. He had that sort of knowledge of people and life which seasons talk so well, and suits so many listeners. He was curious to find out to which of the sisters Loyd was engaged, but all his shrewdness could not fix the point decisively. He talked on incessantly, referring occasionally to Loyd to confirm what he knew well the other’s experience could never have embraced, and asking frankly, as it were, for his opinion on people he was fully aware the other had never met with.