“No, papa,” said she, “I shall not be cold.”
“But won’t you come to the house? I miss you when you come in so late that there’s no time to say a word before we go to bed.”
She got up and followed him into the parsonage, and when they were in the sitting-room together, and the door was closed, she came up to him and kissed him. “Papa,” she said, “would it make you very unhappy if I were to leave you?”
“Leave me!” he said, startled by the serious and almost solemn tone of her voice. “Do you mean for always?”
“If I were to marry, papa?”
“Oh, marry! No; that would not make me unhappy. It would make me very happy, Patty, to see you married to a man you would love—very, very happy; though my days would be desolate without you.”
“That is it, papa. What would you do if I went from you?”
“What would it matter, Patty? I should be free, at any rate, from a load which often presses heavy on me now. What will you do when I shall leave you? A few more years and all will be over with me. But who is it, love? Has anybody said anything to you?”
“It was only an idea, papa. I don’t often think of such a thing; but I did think of it then.” And so the subject was allowed to pass by. This had happened before the day of the second arrival had been absolutely fixed and made known to Miss Woolsworthy.
And then that second arrival took place. The reader may have understood from the words with which Miss Le Smyrger authorised her nephew to make his second visit to Oxney Combe that Miss Woolsworthy’s passion was not altogether unauthorised. Captain Broughton had been told that he was not to come unless he came with a certain purpose; and having been so told, he still persisted in coming. There can be no doubt but that he well understood the purport to which his aunt alluded. “I shall assuredly come,” he had said. And true to his word, he was now there.