“It is my desire to be so, George. You cannot, after this unfortunate delay, go to Doctor Moran without the proofs of your ability to take care of his daughter’s future.”
“How soon can this business be accomplished?”
“In about three weeks, I should think. But wait your full time, and do not go without the credentials of your position. This three or four weeks is necessary to bring to perfection the waiting of two years.”
“I will take your advice, sir. I thank you for your generosity.”
“All that I have is yours, George. And you can write to this dear girl every day in the interim. Go now and tell her what I say. I had other dreams for you as you know—they are over now—I have awakened.”
“Dear Annie!” ejaculated George.
“Dear Annie!” replied the Earl with a sigh. “She is one of the daughters of God, I am not worthy to call her mine; but I have sat at her feet, and learned how to love, and how to forgive, and how to bear disappointment. I will tell you, that when Colonel Saye insulted me last year, and I felt for my sword and would have sent him a letter on its point—Annie stepped before him. ‘Forget, and go on, dear uncle,’ she said; and I did so with a proud, sore heart at first, but quite cheerfully in a week or two; and at the last Hunt dinner he came to me with open hand, and we ate and drank together, and are now firm friends. Yet, but for Annie, one of us might be dead; and the other flying like Cain exiled and miserable. Think of these things, George. The good of being a son, is to be able to profit from your father’s mistakes.”
They parted with a handclasp that went to both hearts, and as Hyde passed his mother’s loom, he went in, and told her all that happened to him, She listened with a smile and a heartache. She knew now that the time had come to say “farewell” to the boy who had made her life for twenty-seven years. “He must marry like the rest of the world, and go away from her,” and only mothers know what supreme self-sacrifice a pleasant acquiescence in this event implies. But she bravely put down all the clamouring selfishness of her long sweet care and affection, and said cheerfully—
“Very much to my liking is Cornelia Moran, She is world-like and heaven-like, and her good heart and sweet nature every one knows. A loving wife and a noble mother she will make, and if I must lose thee, my Joris, there is no girl in America that I like better to have thee.”
“Never will you lose me, mother.”