"When I come across such a disagreeable sight it will be time enough to decide whether I will interfere or not. At present I have not met with anything of the kind," returns he, resolutely putting an end to the dialogue by knocking at Mrs. Byng's portal, within which he is at once admitted. The door of the bedroom communicating with the _salon_ is open, and through it he sees the lady he has come to visit standing surrounded by gaping dress-baskets, strewn raiment, and scattered papers; all the uncomfortable litter that speaks of an imminent departure. She joins him at once, and, shutting the door behind her, sits down with a fagged air. "I hear," he begins--"Willy tells me--I am very sorry to hear----" "Oh, there is no great cause for sorrow," rejoins she quickly, as if anxious to disclaim a grief which might be supposed to check or limit her conversation--"poor dear old auntie!--the people who love her best could not wish to keep her in the state she has been in for the last year; oh, dear!"--sighing--"how very dismal the dregs of life are! do not you hope, Jim, that we shall die before we come to be 'happy releases'?" "I do indeed," replies he gravely; "I expect to be sick--dead-sick of life long before I reach that stage of it." He looks at her resentfully as she speaks, but she has so entirely forgotten her own application of the accented adjectives to his feelings for Amelia, that she replies only by a rather puzzled but perfectly innocent glance. "I never was so unwilling to leave any place in my life," she goes on presently, pursuing her own train of thought; "I do not know how to describe it--a sort of presentiment." He smiles. "And yet I do not think that there are any owls in the Piazza to hoot under your windows!" "Perhaps not," rejoins she, with some warmth; "but what is still more unlucky than that happened to me last night; they passed the wine the wrong way round the table at the MacIvors. I was on thorns!" "And you think that the wine going the wrong way round the table gave your aunt a stroke?" inquires Jim, with an irritating air of asking for information. Mrs. Byng reddens slightly. "I think nothing of the kind; I draw no inference; I only state a fact; it _is_ a very unlucky thing to send the wine round the wrong way: if you had not spent your life among grizzly bears and cannibals you would have known it too!" "There are no cannibals in the Rocky Mountains," corrects Jim quietly; and then they both laugh, and recommence their talk on a more friendly footing. "I am not at all happy about Willy." "No?" "It is not his health so much--his colour is good, and his appetite not bad." "Except the Fat Boy in 'Pickwick,' I never heard of anyone who had a better." "But he is not himself; there is something odd about him!" "Indeed!" "Have not you noticed it yourself?--do not you think that there is something odd about him? Does not he strike you as odd?"