Time had advanced to midnight, after the reading of the Will--and Ovid
was at home.

The silence of the quiet street in which he lived was only disturbed by
the occasional rolling of carriage wheels, and by dance-music from the
house of one of his neighbours who was giving a ball. He sat at his
writing-table, thinking. Honest self-examination had laid out the state
of his mind before him like a map, and had shown him, in its true
proportions, the new interest that filled his life.

Of that interest he was now the willing slave. If he had not known his
mother to be with her, he would have gone back to Carmina when the
lawyer left the house. As it was, he had sent a message upstairs,
inviting himself to dinner, solely for the purpose of seeing Carmina
again--and he had been bitterly disappointed when he heard that Mr. and
Mrs. Gallilee were engaged, and that his cousin would take tea in her
room. He had eaten something at this club, without caring what it was.
He had gone to the Opera afterwards, merely because his recollections
of a favourite singing-lady of that season vaguely reminded him of
Carmina. And there he was, at midnight, on his return from the music,
eager for the next opportunity of seeing his cousin, a few hours
hence--when he had arranged to say good-bye at the family
breakfast-table.

To feel this change in him as vividly as he felt it, could lead to but
one conclusion in the mind of a man who was incapable of purposely
deceiving himself. He was as certain as ever of the importance of rest
and change, in the broken state of his health. And yet, in the face of
that conviction, his contemplated sea-voyage had already become one of
the vanished illusions of his life!