“I beg your pardon, father,” he said deferentially.
“I mentioned the fact, for obvious reasons,” said Matthew.
“Quite so,” said Sylvester, and then hesitating and finally blurting it out, as if he were ashamed of it, he added—
“I know you are a father confessor to every poor devil in trouble.”
The old man looked at his son and his kind eyes grew a little moist. Any tribute of faith and love from Sylvester touched him deeply. But he laughed and said characteristically—
“There are some people who'll tell you anything, if you 're only soft-headed enough to listen to them.” Then he nodded towards the window, and waved his hand—
“There is one, anyhow, who doesn't want a confessor.”
It was Ella, standing in the clear March sunshine of the garden, looking in through the French window, and holding up a bunch of fresh-gathered violets. With a word of adieu to his father, Sylvester went out and joined her. She pinned the flowers in his buttonhole and for ten pleasant minutes they walked along the trim-kept paths.
“You were not angry with me last night?” he asked.
She murmured very meekly—“If I were, I should not be here with you now.”
“I never thought I should—ever do such a thing again,” he said awkwardly. “I couldn't help it. It has made a different man of me.”
She drew herself up quite proudly and looked him straight in the eyes. They were brave, clear eyes, and so were the man's that met them.
“Are you in earnest?” she asked.
“Am I the man not to be in earnest?” he answered.
The doctor's page, running across the strip of lawn to them, broke the spell with the time-honoured morning announcement—
“There is some one in the surgery, sir.”
Sylvester dismissed the urchin and looked at his watch. It was some minutes past his consultation hour.
“We will have a long talk this evening,” he said, bidding her farewell.
CHAPTER IV—LEROUX SPEAKS
Matthew and Miss Lanyon were standing under the front porch talking over poor Frank Leroux when Ella came up with a very happy face.
“What a colour you 've got, child!” cried Agatha Lanyon.
“It is the fresh country air. I was being choked in town.”
“And the country people,” suggested the elder lady, archly.
“And the fresh country people,” assented Ella.
“My dear,” said Matthew to his sister, “this is the first time we've been complimented on our adorable rusticity.”
“We don't count,” said Miss Lanyon.
“I never knew you could be so wicked,” cried Ella, taking her by her shoulders and kissing her. Whereupon she disappeared into the house.
“I do hope it is settled,” said Miss Lanyon, with a little sentimental sigh.
“What?”
“Sylvester and Ella. Do you mean to say you haven't noticed? I have been following it all for months.”
Miss Lanyon had reached the age when one lives in the romances of others.
“I believe you amuse yourself, Agatha, by mixing up your young friends and sorting them out in pairs, like gloves,” remarked Matthew.
Miss Lanyon denied the charge indignantly. This was quite a different matter. Anybody with eyes could see how things were tending. It was a match. She was sure it was a marriage made in heaven.
“I like heaven-made marriages as little as machine-made boots,” said Matthew. “Both are apt to come undone in unexpected places. But if these two are thinking of a wholesome earth-made union—well, I shall be delighted.”
“But hasn't Syl told you anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Couldn't you ask him, Matthew?”
“My dear Agatha,” said he, drawing himself up, “how can you suggest my committing such an impertinence?”
Miss Lanyon worshipped her brother, but she felt there were many odd corners of his mind which needed the housewifely besom; just as there were cobwebs in his office which, on the rare occasions when she entered it, made her fingers twitch. But being organically acquiescent she sighed again sentimentally, and brought Matthew his hat and stick.
For Ella, the hours of that day were winged with sunshine. She loved Sylvester as deeply as one of our untried, pure-minded Northern girls can love; and with larger wisdom, too, than most. For she had lived a free life in her aunt's eccentric house in London, and had sifted the vanities of many men. Passion would only be evoked by the clasp of encircling arms and would rise to meet claiming lips. As yet in Ella it lay a pure fire hidden in the depths of a fervent nature. But all the sweet thrills of a woman's early love were hers—the pride in a strong man's wooing, the fluttering fears as to her sufficiency for his happiness, the resolves, scarce formulated, to raise herself to his level, the dim dreams of a noble life together, striving for the great things of the world that are worth the winning. Added thereto was the delicate charm, essentially feminine, of triumph over the shadows that had fought with her for possession of his heart.
When she entered her room to dress for dinner that evening, she took down her frocks and laid them on the bed, and stood a while in deep thought. She must look her best tonight. She chose a simple cream dress with chiffon round the bodice and sleeves. Halfway through her toilette she clasped her white arms over her neck, and looking in the glass held long converse with her image. It seemed so strange that she, with all her imperfections of soul and body, should be chosen to guide a man's destiny. Then lighter fancies prevailed, and she spent anxious moments in arranging her thick auburn hair. When she came down at last, with a diamond-hilted dagger thrust through the coils, and a bunch of violets peeping shyly from the chiffon in her corsage, Matthew paid her an old man's compliment.
“Do I look nice?” she asked, gratified. “I'm glad; for you once told me that you liked me in this frock.”
There are times when the sincerest of women can be most blandly deceitful.
A general practitioner may propose to himself many pleasant occupations for his spare hours, but his patients dispose of them effectually. On this particular day, when Sylvester craved leisure to watch over Leroux and to open his heart finally to Ella, impossible people fell sick at interminable distances, tiny human beings came with preposterous haste into this world of trouble, and larger ones gave sudden and alarming symptoms of leaving it. It was one of those well-known days of sudden stress when a country doctor eats his meals standing and wearing his overcoat. Finally, an evening visit from which he reckoned on being free by nine kept him by an anxious bedside till nearly eleven. But he had found time to despatch to Ella a few lines scribbled on a leaf of his pocket-book:—
Dearest—I can't come, much as I long to. Will see you in the morning. S. L.
This was almost the first letter he had ever written to her; certainly the first love-letter. The new sweetness of it soothed Ella's disappointment.
At half-past eleven he reached his house, a very weary man. He