He sat before his study-fire deep in thought. Then he got up and paced the room to and fro, with his brows knitted and his hands behind his back.
"I'll do it," he said, half-aloud, at last. "I expect money difficulties would really stand in the way. I know Trevithick died poor, and Lady Jane had little of her own. The lad must love her if she loves him. And it will smooth the way. At worst I shall only suffer a rebuff. I can bear it for the sake of Mary's children. And poor Molly too! Why need she spend her girlhood fretting for her lover when a little money would make things straight?"
He sat down and his face cleared. Again he looked up at the benignant eyes of the portrait.
"I am doing the best I can for them, Mary," he said, speaking aloud as if to a living person.
That evening he announced his intention of taking a run to London during the following week. Such an unusual thing in their quiet life provoked an outcry of surprise from his daughters.
"I may be an old fossil," he said, "but I'm not a limpet attached to a rock. Perhaps I'm tired of you all. Perhaps I'm starved for a walk down Piccadilly, or a visit to a good concert hall. Perhaps—perhaps."
But he gave them no explanation after all of his reason for going.
One event crowded upon another. The next morning, at breakfast, Mr. Graydon drew out a large, boldly addressed envelope from the post-bag.
"Now, who can this be from?" he said, putting it down and looking at it curiously. "'London, W.' Now, who'd be writing to me?"
"Better open it and see," said Sylvia, daintily chipping the top off her egg.