y. There had been floods, broken bridges, and bad
roads in Savoy, and the St. Gothard was almost impassable from a heavy
snow-storm. The difficulties of the road had lost him a day, one of the
very few he was to have with them, and he came, wearied and somewhat
irritated, to his journey's end.

Lovers ought, perhaps, to be more thoughtful about "effect" than they
are in real life. They might take a lesson in this respect with good
profit from the drama, where they enter with all the aids that situation
and costume can give them. At all events, Calvert would scarcely have
presented himself in the jaded and disordered condition in which Loyd
now appeared.

"How ill he looks, poor fellow," said Emily, as the two sisters left him
to dress for dinner.

"I should think he may look ill. Fancy his travelling on, night and day,
through rain and sleet and snow, and always feeling that his few hours
here were to be short ened by all these disasters. And, besides all
this, he is sorry now for the step he has taken; he begins to suspect he
ought not to have left England; that this separation--it must be for at
least two years--bodes ill to us. That it need not have been longer had
he stayed at the home bar, and had, besides, the opportunity of coming
out to see us in Vacation. That it was his friends who over-persuaded
him; and now that he has had a little time for calm reflection, away
from them, he really sees no obstacles to his success at Westminster
that he will not have to encounter at Calcutta."

"And will he persist, in face of this conviction?"

"Of course he will! He cannot exhibit himself to the world as a creature
who does not know his own mind for two days together."

"Is that of more consequence than what would really serve his interests,
Florry?"

"I am no casuist, Milly, but I think that the impression a man makes by
his character for resolution is always of consequence."

Emily very soon saw that her sister spoke with an unusual degree of
irritation. The arrival of her lover had not overjoyed her; it had
scarcely cheered her. He came, too, not full of high hopes and animated
by the prospect of a bright future, speculating on the happy days that
were before them, and even fixing the time they were to meet again, but
depressed and dispirited, darkly hinting at all the dangers of absence,
and gloomily telling over the long miles of ocean that were so soon to
roll between them.

Now Florence was scarcely prep