Leaving the basket in the observatory, she retained the letter in her hand, instinctively avoiding any scrutiny of its superscription, although seen here in the lamplight the thought did strike her that it looked like a woman’s writing. Sir David’s correspondence, as she knew, was so scanty that the sealed missive might indeed mean an event in their lives; and now the present was too full of delicate happiness for her to welcome anything that might portend change.
She stood for a moment on the threshold of the platform, looking out on the two figures silhouetted against the sky. Her father, as usual in his gown, seated on the stone ledge of the parapet, was speaking. David, leaning against the wall with folded arms, was looking down at him. Master Simon’s chuckle, followed by the rare low note of the star-gazer’s laughter, fell upon her ear.
“I do assure you,” the old man was saying, “it was the very surliest fellow in the whole of Bindon village. A complete misanthropist, a perfect curmudgeon! The poor woman would come to me in tears, with sometime a black eye, sometime a swollen lip—I have known her actually cut about the occiput. ‘My poor creature,’ I would say to her, ‘plaster your wound I can, but alter your husband’s humours is at present beyond my power.’”
“Not having yet re-discovered the ‘Star-of-Comfort,’” interrupted David.
The sound of that voice, gently sarcastic and indulgently mocking, had become so dear to Ellinor that she lingered yet for the mere chance of indulging her ear again unobserved.
“Not having then re-discovered the Euphrosinum,” corrected Master Simon, with emphasis on the word “then.” “But that excellent young woman, my daughter, has been of service to me there.”
“She has been of service everywhere.”
This tribute brought joy to the listener. Forced by the turn the conversation was taking to disclose her presence, she emerged upon the platform, but took a seat beside her father’s in silence, the letter for the moment quite forgotten in her pocket.
“Ah, there is Ellinor!”
Sir David had seen her coming first and was the first to greet her. She thought, she hoped, there was gladness in the exclamation.