Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/410

Rh vagaries, had mentioned the fact that Lydia had come home. It was a fact which Floyd considered afterwards, rather sadly. The summer had had for him no lighter side. It had not only been a season of sorrow and of harassing cares; it had also been one of solitary living. In the daily performance of his duties, he had hardly realized his loneliness, his isolation, but now that the works were shut down and he found his employment diminished, if not, like that of his men, quite cut off, he could not keep reflection at bay any longer. It exhibited his life to him as pale and joyless, and rebuked him for allowing it to be so. When he had been told of Lydia's return, his first thought was that he would go to her and experience the agreeable sensation of being in her presence; nothing could inspirit him quite so much as the society and charm of a woman whom he liked—the woman whom he most liked. But other considerations checked this enthusiastic impulse. In the estrangement existing between himself and Stewart, it was impossible that he should remain on an unchanged footing with Stewart's wife. If she believed the charges that Stewart was making, her good opinion of Floyd must be tarnished; and Floyd realized that he must submit to the injustice of this rather than defend himself to her and so perhaps awaken a distrust of her husband. In short, their intimacy was at an end. If he went to see Lydia, she would ask why he should not yield the points on which Stewart was attacking him, why he and her husband should be so deplorably at loggerheads; and then he must either condemn himself or set forth the groundlessness of Stewart's accusations. She might, she doubtless would, hear other versions than that which Stewart would give her; but it was her duty to believe in her husband as far and as long as possible, and it would be easier for her to maintain her belief, Floyd thought, if he himself remained away.

In this moment of renunciation, his mind turned to Marion Clark, who had once pointed out to him the virtue