The old man, skilled in the human heart, did not attempt to argue in such a matter.
“Too early to give in, my boy.”
“I am not of a giving-in kind,” replied the young man earnestly. “But, after all, it is wise to realise a truth. And when a man, though he is young, feels as I do—as I have felt ever since yesterday, when I first saw Mimi’s eyes—his heart jumps. He does not need to learn things. He knows.”
There was silence in the room, during which the twilight stole on imperceptibly. It was Adam who again broke the silence.
“Do you know, uncle, if we have any second sight in our family?”
“No, not that I ever heard about. Why?”
“Because,” he answered slowly, “I have a conviction which seems to answer all the conditions of second sight.”
“And then?” asked the old man, much perturbed.
“And then the usual inevitable. What in the Hebrides and other places, where the Sight is a cult—a belief—is called ‘the doom’—the court from which there is no appeal. I have often heard of second sight—we have many western Scots in Australia; but I have realised more of its true inwardness in an instant of this afternoon than I did in the whole of my life previously—a granite wall stretching up to the very heavens, so high and so dark that the eye of God Himself cannot see beyond. Well, if the Doom must come, it must. That is all.”
The voice of Sir Nathaniel broke in, smooth and sweet and grave.