Syd looked out the window as Edric rambled. To him it sounded like things were more serious than he'd originally anticipated. He could sympathize with the inability to let go of the past a little too well.

When his friend came back around to Syd's own misfortune he took another pensive sip of his drink. "I was ignorant of, or perhaps I may have subconsciously ignored, her affection toward me," If he'd realized sooner maybe things would have been different. "She sent me a letter expressing her intentions and I did a poor job of expressing my willingness to try, despite some of my own shortcomings, I don't think it was well received, because that was the end of it and I didn't push it. I didn't hear from her until I ran into her at an event a couple months ago." He still regretted it, he likely missed a good opportunity in Miss Carmichael and he wasn't sure he would be about to salvage anything this late in the game.

Syd drained his glass and reached for the closest bottle to refill. "Sounds to me, that if you actually love her enough to talk about marriage, a future together, the past should have slowly stopped being an issue for you. Everybody has baggage mate, I let mine get in the way and I likely missed out on something good thanks to a mistake in the past causing me to act on reservations I didn't even know I still had." That was the crutch of it. One broken courtship had given him too much pause to see a good thing standing right in front of him.