"Come in," called the doctor, in answer to his knock.
"Oh, it's you, is it, Harry?" he exclaimed, placing a chair for him, which the young man took rather awkwardly.
"It is not often I trouble you in your study, sir," began Harry, "but I have something of importance to say to you, and I beg that you will pardon the intrusion. I chose a time when we will be least apt to be interrupted."
"I wouldn't advise you to begin it if it will take long to tell," said Mr. Bryan, "for we might be interrupted at any moment. I am expecting an old friend, who is to accompany me on a horse-back ride. He ought to have been here by this time."
Harry fidgeted nervously about in his chair. It required something of an effort to make his request carelessly.
"You are the only one," he began, a little disconcertedly, "I feel sure, who can help me in my present dilemma."
The old doctor wheeled suddenly around in his chair, and all in an instant the object of the young man's visit flashed over his mind.
"To my mind he is come to tell me that he has fallen head over heels in love with little Dorothy, and wants to marry her;" and with the thought a broad smile crept up to the lips the white beard covered.
He had never been in love himself – but, for all that, he always sympathized with young folks in their tender affairs of the heart, and many a secret sigh escaped his lips for the lost opportunities of the past.
"Well," he began, brusquely, "why don't you proceed, my boy?"
"It is such a delicate matter," began Kendal, "that I scarcely know how to frame the words. You have always been so kind to me in the past, that the remembrance of it has led me to dare hope that your goodness will not desert me in the present emergency."
"Well," said the old gentleman, rather enjoying the young man's evident discomfiture, "pray go on."
"The boon I have to ask," began Kendal, "will either make or mar my future."
"Is it so bad as that?" returned the old gentleman with assumed innocence.
"You could never imagine what it is that I wish to ask," continued the young man.
"I might guess, perhaps," laughed the doctor, with a roguish twinkle in his eye.
"Surely you – you couldn't have noticed the one great wish of my heart," gasped Kendal. "I – "
At that moment the expected visitor was announced.
"Come and see me in my library this evening," said Doctor Bryan, grasping the young man's hand, "and we will talk over the matter you have so much at heart, and I will give you my answer in regard to it."
"You are too good, sir," cried Kendal, in bewilderment.
At that moment the entrance of the visitor put a stop to all further conversation, and Kendal arose and took his leave after an exchange of greetings.
"How could he possibly have divined that I was thinking of asking him for money?" he pondered.
He heard Dorothy singing at the top of her voice in the drawing-room, and he turned on his heel in the hallway, and walked in an opposite direction with a frown of impatience on his face.
Dorothy saw him pass the door, and she bit her lip with vexation.
"Of course he heard me playing on the piano, for I thumped as loud as ever I could; but he did not come in. It seems to me he is trying 'to cool off,' as we girls in the bindery used to say."
Dorothy tiptoed over to the window as she heard the front door slam after him, and if he had looked back he would have seen a very defiant though tear-stained face peering earnestly after him from behind the lace curtains.
Kendal walked disconsolately enough through the spacious grounds and out into the main road, little dreaming that a strange fate was drawing him onward with each step he took.
He had traveled a mile or more over the country road, when suddenly he was startled by the sound of horses' hoofs.
The next instant, from around the bend in the road, a horse dashed riderless, covered with foam, and so near him that he had to spring aside or its hoofs would have been buried in his brain. One glance, and a cry of horror broke from his lips. It was Doctor Bryan's horse.
Great God! where was he? Kendal realized that there had been a terrible accident, and that at that moment the doctor lay dying – perhaps dead – by the road-side.
In all haste he rushed down the road in the direction whence the horse had come, and around the first bend he beheld the prostrate figure of Doctor Bryan lying covered with dust, his friend bending over him.
In an instant he was by his side. One glance, and his worst fears were realized – the old gentleman had been mortally injured – he was dying. He held out his hand when he saw Kendal bending over him, and nodded assent as his companion briefly and hurriedly related how the terrible accident had come about.
"I was just about to go for you," said the friend. "The doctor has something to say to you. Surely it was the work of Providence that you happened along just now."
Kendal bent over the prostrate form.
"I – I am dying, Harry!" gasped the doctor; "but that – of which we were – talking – this – afternoon – is – uppermost – in – my – mind. You – you – wished – me – to – give my – consent – to – to – your – wooing – and wedding little – Dorothy. I – give – it – to you – here – and – now – with – my – blessing – for – I – know – she – cares – for you. Six months – from – to-day – at – noon – my – will – must be read; and on that day you – must marry her – if ever – aye – you must – be wedded – ere that noon-hour – shall have waned. Then – then – within that hour – you shall know – the contents of – my will; and – remember, too, that – it – is – irrevocable!"
Harry Kendal reeled back, like one dazed by an awful blow.
The suddenness of this affair had taken his breath away. But before he could raise his voice in protest, or utter one word of the terrible mistake which the old gentleman was laboring under, Doctor Bryan breathed his last, and he found himself betrothed, as it were, to Dorothy, and by the most terrible mistake that ever a man labored under.
Chapter VII
A fortnight had passed since the fatal accident in Brighton Woods, and life at Gray Gables had once more resumed the even tenor of its regular routine.
The first words that Doctor Bryan had gasped out to his friend, when he regained consciousness and found himself fatally injured, were:
"Tell – tell – them at home – that – everything – must go – on – the same – until – after – my will – has – been read – and that – must not be – until – six – months – after – my – decease."
The sudden loss of Doctor Bryan, the kind-hearted old gentleman who had raised her from poverty to great wealth, was a severe blow to Dorothy. For in that short length of time she had learned to love him, as a daughter might have done, with all the strength of her passionate, girlish heart.
The old housekeeper and the servants, who had been in his employ a quarter of a century or more, mourned for him and refused to be comforted.
Great was the excitement in the household when the friend who had accompanied Doctor Bryan on that fatal ride broke to them the strange compact between the doctor and Kendal, to which he had been a witness.
He readily decided that it was best not to tell Dorothy the exact situation of affairs, and that it would probably be more in accordance with a young girl's romantic idea of marriage for Kendal to woo her on his own account, and gain her consent, ere he breathed to her that this was Doctor Bryan's wish.
And this was the course that Kendal followed. He allowed fully a month to transpire