“I think I will be going home,” said she, and turned towards the gateway. The doctor followed her and together they left the cemetery and entered the high-road. When the sound of their voices had died away in the distance, a deep and heavy shadow separated itself from the side of the house near the window and resolving itself again into the image of the man through whose ears we have listened to the broken dialogue we have endeavored to transcribe, took up its stand before the still lighted window and for several minutes studied the peculiar interior most diligently. Then it drew off, and sliding down the path which followed the side of the house, emerged upon the road and took its own course to the village.
Something which he did not see and something which he did not hear, took place at the other end of the town before a cheerfully lighted mansion. Dr. Izard and Polly had traversed the length of the street, and had nearly reached the cottage in which she was at present living, when the former felt the little hand now thrust confidingly into his arm, flutter and shift a trifle. As the girl had regained her spirits and was now chatting in quite a merry way upon indifferent topics, he looked up to see what it was that had affected her, and saw nothing save the lights of the Unwin place and a figure which must have been that of young Unwin sitting on the shadowy veranda. As he had reasons of his own for not liking to pass this house, he stopped and glanced at the young girl inquiringly. She had ceased speaking and her head was hanging so low that the curls dropped against her cheek, hiding her eyes and the expression of her mouth.
“I think,” she whispered, “if you don’t mind, that I will walk on the other side of you. It is very late for me to be out, even with you, and Clarke——”
The doctor, drawing in his breath, turned his full face on her and stood so long gazing into her drooping countenance that she felt frightened and attempted to move on. Instantly he responded to her wish and they passed the house with quick and agitated steps, but when the shadows of the next block had absorbed them, they both paused as it were simultaneously, and the doctor said with something more than his usual feeling in his thin, fine voice, “Do you care for Clarke Unwin, little one?”
Her answer struck him.
“Do I care for breath, for life? He has been both to me ever since I could remember anything. And now he cares for me.”
The doctor, lost in some overwhelming dream or thought, did not answer her for several minutes. Then he suddenly lifted her face by its dainty chin, and in a deep, controlled tone, totally different from the one he had used a short time before, he solemnly remarked:
“For fourteen years I have taken an interest in you and done for you what I have done for nobody else in the town. I hope that my care has made a good girl of you, and that under all your fanciful ways and merry antics there hides a true woman’s heart.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I know that I would rather give up my fortune than one little memory connected with these last three weeks.”
“And he—he loves you? You are sure of it, little one?”