“Let us be patient. Love has reasons that reason does not understand; and if Cornelia is Hyde’s by predestination, as well as by choice, vainly we shall worry and fret; all our opposition will come to nothing. Give Cornelia this interval, and tithe it not; in a few days Arenta will have gone away; and as for Hyde, any hour may summon him to join his father in England; and this summons, as it will include his mother, he can neither evade nor put off. Then Rem will have his opportunity.”
“To be patient—to wait—to say nothing—it is to give opportunity too much scope. I must tell that young fellow a little of my mind—”
“You must not make yourself a town’s talk, John. Just now New York is all for lovers. If you interfere between Hyde and Cornelia while it is in this temper, every one will cry out, ‘Oh, the pity of it!’ and you will be bayed into doing some mad thing or other. Do I not know you, dear one?”
“God’s precious!” and he took her in his arms, saying, “the man who learns nothing from his wife will never learn anything from anybody. Come, then, and we will eat our meal. I had forgotten Rem, and as you say, Hyde may have to go to England to-morrow; putting-off has broken up many an ill marriage.”
“Time and absence against any love affair that is not destiny! And if it be destiny, there is only submission, nothing else. But life has a maybe’ in everything dear; a maybe that is just as likely to please us as not.”
Then Doctor John looked up with a smile. “You are right, Ava,” he said cheerfully. “I will take the maybe. Maybes have a deal to do with life. When you come to think of it, there is not a victory of any kind gained, nor a good deed done except on a maybe. So maybe all I fear may pass like a summer cloud. Yet, take my word for it, there is, I think, no maybe in Rem’s chances with Cornelia.”
“We shall see. I think there is.”
Certainly Rem was of this opinion. The past few weeks had been very favourable to him. In them he had been continually associated with Cornelia, and her manner towards him had been so frankly kind and familiar, so confidential and sympathetic, that he could not help but contrast it with their previous intercourse, when she had appeared to withdraw herself from all his approaches and to forbid by her retiring manner even the courtesies to which his long acquaintance with her entitled him.
If he had known more of women he would not have given himself any hope on this change of attitude. It simply meant that Cornelia had arrived at that certainty with regard to her own affections which permitted her a more general latitude. She knew that she loved Hyde, and she knew that Hyde loved her. They had a most complete confidence in each other; and she was not afraid, either for his sake or her own, to give to Rem that friendship which the circumstances warranted. That this friendship could ever grow to love on her part was an impossible thing; and if she thought of Rem’s feelings, it was to suppose that he must understand this position as well as she did herself.
Rem, however, was quite aware of his rival, and with the blunt directness of his nature watched with jealous dislike, and often with rude impatience, the familiar intercourse which his aunt’s partiality permitted Hyde. He was, indeed, often so rude that a less sweet-tempered, a less just youth than George Hyde would have pointedly resented many offences that he passed by with that “noble not caring” which is often the truest courage.