Page:A strange, sad comedy (IA strangesadcomedy00seawiala).pdf/197

Rh before doing that, he went over to Corbin Hall one day, where a new solution of the difficulty presented itself.

It was a bright, wintry day in December when he was ushered into the shabby library, where sat the Colonel. Now, although none of the family from Corbin Hall had darkened the doors of Shrewsbury for a month past, Mr. Romaine had calmly ignored this, and had treated the Colonel's studied standoffishness with the most exasperating nonchalance. Colonel Corbin could not be actively rude to any one to have saved his own life, and the extent of his resentment was shown merely in not visiting Mr. Romaine, and receiving him with a stiffness that he found much more difficult to maintain than Mr. Romaine did to endure. The struggle between the Colonel's natural and sonorous urbanity toward a guest and his grave displeasure with Mr. Romaine was desperate; and Mr. Romaine, seeing it with half an eye, enjoyed it hugely. The idea of taking Colonel Corbin seriously was excessively ludicrous to him; and the Colonel's expectation of being taken seriously on all occasions he thought the most diverting thing in the world.