Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/344



"Yes--presently," answered Sophy, and she did not move.

Waife was seriously alarmed. He paused a moment-then went back to his room--took his hat and his staff--came back.

"Sophy, I should like to hobble out and breathe the air; it will do me good. Will you give me your arm? I am still very weak."

Sophy now started--shook back her fair curls-rose-put on her bonnet, and in less than a minute was by the old man's side. Drawing his arm fondly into hers, they descend the stairs; they are in the garden; Mrs. Morley comes to meet them--then George. Wife exerts himself to talk--to be gay --to protect Sophy's abstracted silence by his own active, desultory, erratic humour. Twice or thrice, as he leans on Sophy's arm, she draws it still nearer to her, and presses it tenderly. She understands--she thanks him. Hark! from some undiscovered hiding-place near the water--Fairthorn's flute! The music fills the landscape as with a living presence; the swans pause upon the still lake--the tame doe steals through yonder leafless trees; and now, musing and slow, from the same desolate coverts, comes the doe's master. The music spells them all. Guy Darrell sees his guests where they have halted by the stone sun-dial. He advances--joins them--congratulates Waife on his first walk as a convalescent. He quotes Gray's well-known verses applicable to that event, and when, in that voice sweet as the flute itself, he comes to the lines: ["See the wretch who long has tost," &c.--GRAY.]

"The common sun, the air, the skies,       To him are opening paradise"

Sophy, as if suddenly struck with remorse at the thought that she, and she alone, was marring that opening paradise to the old man in his escape from the sick-room to "the sun, the air, the skies," abruptly raised her looks from the ground, and turned them full upon her guardian's face, with an attempt at gladness in her quivering smile, which, whatever its effect on Waife, went straight to the innermost heart of Guy Darrell. On the instant he recognised, as by intuitive sympathy, the anguish from which that smile struggled forth--knew that Sophy had now learned