From time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk,
as a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then
he went forward at a swifter pace. "She's charming!"
he said, and he thought he had spoken aloud.
He found himself floundering about in the deep sand,
wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat
just before she started. The clerk came to take his fare,
and Corey looked radiantly up at him in his lantern-light,
with a smile that he must have been wearing a long time;
his cheek was stiff with it. Once some people who stood
near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then he
suspected himself of having laughed outright.
XI.
COREY put off his set smile with the help of a frown,
of which he first became aware after reaching home,
when his father asked--
"Anything gone wrong with your department of the fine
arts to-day, Tom?"
"Oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving
his brows from the strain upon them, and beaming again.
"But I was thinking whether you were not perhaps right
in your impression that it might be well for you to make
Colonel Lapham's acquaintance before a great while."
"Has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked Bromfield Corey,
laying aside his book and taking his lean knee between
his clasped hands.
"Oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply.
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