All this was being in Paradise. She felt when she walked home with him, and when she was alone afterwards in her own room, that, in truth, she had only liked him before. Now she loved him. Now she was beginning to know him, and to feel that she would really,—really die of a broken heart if anything were to rob her of him. But she could let him go now, without a feeling of discomfort, if she thought that she was to see him again when she was at Carstairs.
But this was not the last walk in the woods, even on this occasion. He remained two days at Bowick, so necessary was it for him to renew his intimacy with Mr. Peacocke. He explained that he had got two days' leave from the tutor of his College, and that two days, in College parlance, always meant three. He would be back on the third day, in time for "gates"; and that was all which the strictest college discipline would require of him. It need hardly be said of him that the most of his time he spent with Mary; but he did manage to devote an hour or two to his old friend, the school-assistant.
Mr. Peacocke told his whole story, and Carstairs, whose morals were perhaps not quite so strict as those of Mr. Puddicombe, gave him all his sympathy. "To think that a man can be such a brute as that," he said, when he heard that Ferdinand Lefroy had shown himself to his wife at St. Louis,—"only on a spree."
"There is no knowing to what depth utter ruin may reduce a man who has been born to better things. He falls into idleness, and then comforts himself with drink. So it seems to have been with him."
"And that other fellow;—do you think he meant to shoot you?"
"Never. But he meant to frighten me. And when he brought out his knife in the bedroom at Leavenworth he did. My pistol was not loaded."
"Why not?"
"Because little as I wish to be murdered, I should prefer that to murdering any one else. But he didn't mean it. His only object was to get as much out of me as he could. As for me, I couldn't give him more because I hadn't got it." After that they made a league of friendship, and Mr. Peacocke promised that he would, on some distant occasion, take his wife with him on a visit to Carstairs.
It was about a month after this that Mary was packed up and sent on her journey to Carstairs. When that took place, the Doctor was in supreme good-humour. There had come a letter from the father of the two Mowbrays, saying that he had again changed his mind. He had, he said, heard a story told two ways. He trusted Dr. Wortle would understand him and forgive him, when he declared that he had believed both the stories. If after this the Doctor chose to refuse to take his boys back again, he would have, he acknowledged, no ground for offence. But if the Doctor would take them, he would intrust them to the Doctor's care with the greatest satisfaction in the world,—as he had done before.
For a while the Doctor had hesitated; but here, perhaps for the first time in her life, his wife was allowed to persuade him. "They are such leading people," she said.