He almost laughed. Here, in the big, lonely house, which for years had been as a hermitage to him, the idea of his being asked to become mentor to a lovely Spanish princess seemed an absurdity.
“Let me see what Grantley has to say about Spain and the Spaniards,” he said to himself, going to the book-shelves and taking down a volume.
Captain Grantley was a patient of his, who had travelled in Spain, and recorded his experiences in print. For the next half-hour Hugh was reading about bullfights, romantic ruins seen by moonlight, mantillas, dark-eyed beauties, unpleasant railway journeys, and stuffy hostelries where the diet appeared to be garlic fried in oil. Nothing seemed to remind him of his princess; but he was still reading on, when a cab drove up, and there was a ring at the hall bell.
“At this hour!” (It was nearly midnight.) He went into the hall, unbarred and opened the door:
“Father?” His lanky son stepped joyfully in. “Why, you look surprised! Surely you got my letter?” he said, after depositing bags and hampers in the hall.
“Your letter? No,” said Dr. Paull. Somehow, Ralph’s unexpected arrival was a slight shock to him. “I thought you were not coming back for a week yet,” he said, after they went into the dining-room.
“We were away more than the fortnight, father,” said the pale lad, with a smile as sad as his dead young mother’s had been when her morbid sensitiveness was wounded. “But—you don’t look well! You have been worried into going to some dinner-party or another” (with a glance at his father’s evening dress). “I must not go away again! They will do for you among them!”
“I’m not dead yet, you see,” said Hugh, feeling a new embarrassment.
Until now there had been a confidence between him and the delicate lad, who looked at him with his lost Lilia’s eyes, which was more like the mutual understanding between attached brothers than that of father with son. For the first time Dr. Paull felt reluctant to speak of his doings to Ralph.
“But you must want some supper,” he suggested. “I will call up one of the servants—”