CHAPTER XII. DARKER AND DARKER. THERE was an unusual depression at the villa each had his or her own load of anxiety, and each felt that an atmosphere of gloom was thickening around, and, without being able to say why or wherefore, that dark days were coming. “Among your letters this morning was there none from the vicar, Mr. Calvert?” asked Miss Grainger, as he sat smoking his morning cigar under the porch of the cottage. “No,” said he, carelessly. “The post brought me nothing of any interest A few reproaches from my friends about not writing, and relieving their anxieties about this unhappy business. They had it that I was killed--beyond that, nothing.” “But we ought to have heard from old Mr. Loyd before this. Strange, too, Joseph has not written.” “Stranger if he had! The very mention of my name as a referee in his affairs will make him very cautious with his pen.” “She is so fretted,” sighed the old lady. “I see she is, and I see she suspects, also, that you have taken me in your counsels. We are not as good friends as we were some time back.” “She really likes you, though--I assure you she does, Mr. Calvert. It was but t’other day she said, ‘What would have become of us all this time back if Mad Harry--you know your nickname--if Mad Harry had not been here?’” “That’s not liking! That is merely the expression of a weak gratitude towards the person who helps to tide over a dreary interval. You might feel it for the old priest who played piquet with you, or the Spitz terrier that accompanied you in your walks. “Oh, it’s far more than that. She is constantly talking of your great abilities--how you might be this, that and t’other. That, with scarcely an effort, you can master any subject, and without any effort at all always make yourself more agreeable than anyone else.” “Joseph excepted?” “No, she didn’t even except him; on the contrary, she said, ‘It was unfortunate for him to be exposed to such a dazzling rivalry--that your animal spirits alone would always beat him out of the field.’” “Stuff and nonsense! If I wasn’t as much his superior in talent as in temperament, I’d fling myself over that rock yonder, and make an end of it!” After a few seconds’ pause he went on: “She may think what she likes of _me_, but one thing is plain enough--she does not love _him_. It is the sort of compassionating, commiserating estimate imaginative girls occasionally get up for dreary depressed fellows, constituting themselves discoverers of intellect that no one ever suspected--revealers of wealth that none had ever dreamed of. Don’t I know scores of such who have poetised the most commonplace of men into heroes, and never found out their mistake till they married them!” “You always terrify me when you take to predicting, Mr. Calvert” “Heaven knows, it’s not my ordinary mood. One who looks so little into the future for himself has few temptations to do so for his friends.” “Why do you feel so depressed?”