A look of amusement came into his grave eyes, and lit for a moment the sombreness of a face prematurely careworn.
“I am going to London,” he said. “I sold the practice this morning.”
Ella rose from her chair impetuously. “Why didn't you tell me at once, instead of letting me say all these silly things? It is just like a man.”
“You took my apathy so much for granted,” he said, laughing.
“I suppose I am a weak wretch, after all,” said Ella.
Sylvester put down his pipe and stood by her side.
“It is really all your doing, Ella. This is not the first time you have pointed out my way to me. And it won't be the last, will it?”
There was a note of pathetic appeal in his tone that made her heart beat a little faster. Of all the phases of his manhood that her instinctive feminine alertness had caused him to present to her, this one moved her the most strongly. An unwonted shy tenderness came into her eyes.
“It is for you to settle that,” she said.
He looked at her for a moment as if about to speak, but some inward conflict seemed to check the words. A man's memories and dead loves rise up sometimes and stare at him in sad reproach.
“I wish I had the gift of speech,” he said.
“What do you want to say?” she asked gently.
He smiled whimsically. “If I could tell you that, I should have the gift.”
“You'll let me see something of you in London, won't you?”
“Why, of course! Whom else should I want to see? Frodsham's practice is a large one—I am buying a share, you know. A specialist generally has his hands full. I shall have neither the time nor the desire to go about butterflying. Besides, it is only a few people that like me. I'm generally looked upon as a 'stick.'”
His head had been turned aside; and while there had been no danger of his glance, Ella had scanned his face as a girl does that of a man who is already something more to her than friend or brother. It was thin and intellectual, somewhat careworn, with deep vertical lines between the brows. The hair was black and wavy, thinning a little over the temples; the features well cut and sensitive; the eyes, deeply sunken, possessing keenness, but little brilliance; a moustache, standing well away at each end from the cheeks, accentuated their sharp contours. Yet in spite of the intellectual delicacy of the face, the tanned, rough skin, corresponding with the well-knit wiriness of his frame, gave assurance of strong physical health.
The last epithet in his remarks, so at variance with the character she was idealising from her scrutiny, moved her ready indignation.
“I should like to have, a quarter of an hour with the fool that said so!” she exclaimed.
“You are loyal to your friends,” said Sylvester.
They discussed the point. Ella let loose the fine scorn of five and twenty for the shallow society that could not appreciate a man of his calibre. Her championship was sweet for him to hear. For some time past he had been gradually growing conscious of the force that this sympathetic intelligence and this warm nature were bringing into his life. Unwittingly he had revealed the fact to Ella. As woman, and especially the fresh girl, is responsive, and gives bit by bit of herself, as it is craved, Ella, when she looked into her heart, found much that had been yielded. The situation therefore was sweet and delicate.
“My going will be a blow to my father,” he said after a while. “I hardly like to tell him.”
“He wouldn't stand in your way,” said Ella. “He's not like that. We have talked it over scores of times. He is as anxious as I am for you to take your proper place in the world.”
“Dear old fellow,” said Sylvester, his face brightening. “He would cut off both his feet for me, gladly. But he would feel the pain all the same.”
“Yes, who wouldn't love him?” said Ella.
“I wish I had a father.”
“We'll go shares in him,” said Sylvester.
“His heart is big enough.”
And again the girl coloured and felt very happy, as if the puzzle of her life were being explained to her.
“And Dorothy?”
“That's where the difficulty comes in. Would London be good for her?”
“Why not leave her here?”
Ella looked at him sharply and saw, as she had expected, the alarm on his face.
“You don't know what she is to me,” he said.
“It would cheer Uncle Matthew when you 're gone. He is devoted to her.”
He was silent awhile. The thought of parting from the child, the living memory of his dead wife; was a pang whose intensity he could not express even to Ella. She was seven. For four years he had brought her up alone in his own house, under the care of an old family servant who had taught her to read, and say her prayers, and use her knife and fork in a way befitting her station. The rest of her tiny education Sylvester himself had seen to. She was his constant companion, abroad and at home.
He could talk to her as it was in his power to—talk to no one else, almost persuading himself that her innocent clear eyes saw into the depths of his heart. To leave her behind was a prospect filled with unspeakable dismay.
“It's a weary world,” he said, by way of generalisation.
“It isn't!” cried Ella. “It's a glorious world, full of love and heroism and beauty. I won't have my dear world abused! It is sweet to be alive in it, to use all one's faculties, to go about among men and women, to hear the rain, to smell the hay—”
“And get hay fever and then come to me—the misanthrope—to cure you. Paganism generally ends that way.”
“I should call your being able to cure me a very beautiful thing too,” she exclaimed conclusively. “Isn't your knowledge of healing a glorious thing?”
“Oh, don't tell me about the child gathering pebbles by the sea-shore.” It was modesty on Newton's part, but mock modesty on that of the people who quote him now. “Children can pick up a tremendous lot of pebbles in two hundred years!”
The door opened and Matthew Lanyon stood on the threshold, with an amused smile on his grave face. For the girl had been speaking with animation, and the fresh colour in her cheeks and the happiness in her eyes made her goodly to look upon.
“Syl annihilated as usual?” he asked, coming forward.
“I hope so. He won't be converted, Uncle Matthew. What do you think of the world? Isn't it a beautiful world?”
“Since it holds you, my dear, how could it be otherwise?”
She laughed and looked at Sylvester with some coquetry. Here was a lesson in compliment by which he might profit. Sylvester thrust forward an armchair for his father.
“Tired?”
“Of course not. What has a healthy man got to do with being tired? No, my dear Ella, please don't. You know I disapprove of cushions. They are for the young and delicate.”
“Where shall we haye tea?” asked Ella. “Here, or in the drawing-room? Aunt Agatha is in her district.”
“Oh, here, then, by all means. We can have it comfortably.”
Ella rang the bell and cleared an occasional table of a litter of pipes, cigar-boxes, and papers. Matthew Lanyon lay back in his chair with the air of a man who had earned his home comforts, and stretched out his feet to the fire. Then he put his invariable question—
“How's Dorothy?”