—Wordsworth (Elegiacs).
Sir David sat down upon the parapet, shifted the lantern and began to read. Ellinor watched him, the tumultuous beating of her heart gradually sinking down to a dull languor. Master Simon was pacing the platform, now conning over some chemical formula to himself, now pausing to gaze upon the stars with a good humoured sneer upon the futility of astronomy in general and the absurdity of Sir David’s in particular. A bat came and flapped with noiseless wings round the lantern and was lost again in the darkness of the surrounding deeps. It seemed to Ellinor a heavy space of time, and still David sat with a contracted brow, motionless, staring at the open sheet in his hand. At length he raised his head. His eyes sought, not herself, but the comrade of his long years of solitude.
“Cousin Simon!”
The old man turned in his walk, a fantastic figure in his flapping skirts as he shuffled forward out of the gloom. Evidently he had perceived a note of urgency in Sir David’s tone, for he came quickly.
“Yes, lad!”
Ellinor had not yet heard that inflection of solicitude in her father’s voice, but she recognised that it belonged also to that past they all dreaded; and for the first time she realised something of the ties that bound these unlikely companions to each other.
“Cousin Simon,” said David with stiff lips, “she asks me to receive her here!”
“Who? Maud?—What! the heathen vixen! Don’t answer her, don’t answer her!”
Sir David looked up. There was the stamp of pain upon his features; and yet, as she told herself, it was not so much pain as the loathing of one forced to contemplate something of utter abhorrence. Both men, she saw, were quite oblivious of her presence: the past was now stronger about them than the present. As Sir David made no answer beyond that dumb look, Master Simon grew yet more vehement.
“Pshaw! man, you’re not going to give way now after all these years! The thing’s irreparable between you. Why, David, what are you thinking of? How could you bear it? Think for a moment what her presence here would mean!”