eBooks Base 2000

For that
something was, just now, amiss with Charles Verity, Carteret could not
disguise from himself. He was changed, in a way a little broken--so at
least the younger man's kindly, keenly observant, blue eyes regretfully
judged him. He fell into long silences, seeming to sink away into some
abyss of cheerless thought; while his speech had, too often, a bitter
edge to it. Carteret mourned these indications of an unhappy frame of
mind. Did more--sought by all means in his power to conjure them away.
"We must make your father fight his battles over again, dear witch," he
told Damaris, pacing the terrace walk topping the sea-wall beside her,
one evening in the early November dusk. "His record is a very brilliant
one and he ought to get more comfort out of the remembrance of it. Let's
conspire, you and I, to make him sun himself in the achievements and
activities of those earlier years. What do you say?"
"Oh! do it, do it," she answered fervently. "He is sad--and I am so
afraid that it is partly my fault.


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