“Oh, I suppose he's only a fool,” said Mr. Solley, grimly. “I knew that. Spirited girl, Gore, very. Good morning.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Gore, mildly, rubbing his glasses. “How quickly they do things!”
Elderly gentlemen whose wives are dead and children adventuring in the Hesperides should take advice. Mrs. Cutting might have advised against this paragraph in Mr. Solley's letter:
“I have taken the trouble to inquire whether you have been acting as a gentleman should. Inasmuch as Miss Lucia seemed to imply that the matter no longer interests her, I presume she has followed her own will, which is certainly a woman's right. With respect to the Michigan lands, I inclose surveys. You will do well,” etc.
But Mr. Solley had not for many years thought of the Hesperides as a more difficult piece of property to survey than another. Men and women followed their own wills there as elsewhere, and were quite right, so long as they did business honorably. And Mr. Gore had been a managed and advised man all his wedded life, and had not found, that it increased his happiness. That advice had always tended to embark him on some enterprise that was fatiguing.
“A good woman, Letitia,” often ran Mr. Gore's reflections; and then, with a sense of furtiveness, as if Letitia somewhere in the spiritual universe might overhear his thought, “a little masterful—a—spirited, very.”
But it was hard for Wimberton people to have a secret shut up among them. It was not respectful to Main Street, with John Solley fleeing mysteriously in the night and coming no more to Wimberton, and Lucia going about with her nose in the air, impossible to sympathize with. Some months passed, and Lucia seemed more subdued, then very quiet indeed, with a liking to sit by her father's side, to Mr. Gore's slight uneasiness. She might wish him to do something.
He knew no more than Wimberton what had happened to send John westward and Lucia to sitting beside him in unused silence; but he differed from Wimberton in thinking it perhaps not desirable to know. He would pat her hand furtively, and polish his glasses, without seeming to alter the situation. Once he asked timidly if it were not dull for her.
“No, father.”
“I've thought sometimes—sometimes—a—I don't remember what I was going to say.”