You may depend upon it they had better give up trying to do this sort of thing at this hour." Captain Lovelock was more disposed to conversation than Bernard had known him before.

His discourse of old had been languid and fragmentary, and our hero had never heard him pursue a train of ideas through so many involutions.

To Bernard's observant eye, indeed, the Captain was an altered man.

His manner betrayed a certain restless desire to be agreeable, to anticipate judgment--a disposition to smile, and be civil, and entertain his auditor, a tendency to move about and look out of the window and at the clock.

He struck Bernard as a trifle nervous--as less solidly planted on his feet than when he lounged along the Baden gravel-walks by the side of his usual companion--a lady for whom, apparently, his admiration was still considerable.