Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/361



CHAPTER X.

In every life, go it fast, go it slow, there are critical pausing places. When the journey is renewed the face of the country is changed.

How well she suited that simple room; herself so simply dressed, her marvellous beauty so exquisitely subdued! She looked at home there, as if all of home that the house could give were there collected.

She had finished and sealed the momentous letters, and had come, with a sense of relief, from the table at the farther end of the room, on which those letters, ceremonious and conventional, had been written,—come to the window, which, though mid-winter, was open, and the redbreast, with whom she had made friends, hopped boldly almost within reach, looking at her with bright eyes and head curiously aslant. By the window a single chair, and a small reading-desk, with the book lying open. The short day was not far from its close, but there was ample light still in the skies, and a serene if chilly stillness in the air without.

Though expecting the relation she had just summoned to her presence, I fear she had half forgotten him. She was standing by the window deep in revery as he entered, so deep that she started when his voice struck her ear and he stood before her. She recovered herself quickly, however, and said with even more than her ordinary kindliness of tone and manner towards the scholar, "I am so glad to see and congratulate you."

"And I so glad to receive your congratulations," answered the scholar in smooth, slow voice, without a stutter.

"But, George, how is this?" asked Lady Montfort. "Bring that chair, sit down here, and tell me all about it. You wrote me word you were cured,—at least sufficiently to re move your noble scruples. You did not say how. Your uncle tells me, by patient will and resolute practice."

"Under good guidance. But I am going to confide to you a secret, if you will promise to keep it."

"Oh, you may trust me: I have no female friends."

The clergyman smiled, and spoke at once of the lessons he had received from the basketmaker.

"I have his permission," he said in conclusion, "to confide the service he rendered me, the intimacy that has sprung up between us, but to you alone,—not a word to your guests. When you have once seen him, you will understand why an