Thus, in the present instance he felt, after a while, that he was but anticipating more misery when he had already sufficient to endure; and, doing in the end what he ought to have done at first, he started up, and went to seek Marian, in order to give her the opportunity of letting her own conduct speak for itself. CHAPTER IX. De Vaux had calmed himself as much as he possibly could; and as he was not blessed with a face possessing that general expression of jocund felicity which is usually denominated a smiling countenance, whatever degree of gravity and care was left in his look at present excited no particular notice in the drawing-room, whither his steps were first directed. The party there assembled now consisted of Mrs. Falkland and her daughter, with Colonel Manners; and the latter alone saw that the agitation which he had beheld the gipsy's letter produce in his friend had ended in permanent distress. "Where is Marian?" said De Vaux, as he entered, not very much disappointed, perhaps, to find that she was not with the rest of the family; "where is Marian?--do you know, Isadore?" "I left her drawing in the little saloon at the other end of the house," replied Isadore; "but that was a full hour ago, Edward; and if she expected a gay knight or wandering troubadour to come and sooth her, either with his _gaie science_ or his _bien dire_, she may have left her solitude by this time in disappointment." De Vaux smiled somewhat bitterly, as he felt how much more painfully he had been employed than he would have been in the occupations to which Isadore referred; and, again leaving the drawing-room, he sped along the same passages which, with a light and bounding heart, he had often trod in search of her upon some joyous errand whom he now sought with feelings of care, anxiety, and sorrow. Marian was still where her cousin Isadore had left her; and though, perhaps, she did think that De Vaux might have found her out sooner, when he had no ostensible motive for being absent from the side of her he loved, yet, like a wise girl, she received him with as sweet a smile as if no such slight reproach had ever crossed her fancy. The next moment she rejoiced that she had done so; for the expression of anguish in her lover's eyes did not escape her, and she felt at once that, for whatever other occupation De Vaux had yielded the pleasure of her society, it was for no agreeable one. "Look at this drawing, Edward," she said, as he came in: "do you not think that I have made my hermit look very melancholy sitting on that rock?" "Not so melancholy as my thoughts, dear Marian," replied De Vaux, gazing over her shoulder, apparently at the drawing, but in truth hardly seeing a line that the paper contained; "not so melancholy as my thoughts."