Soon they got on the only topic she cared for, and, in the course of this second conversation, he took her into his confidence, and told her he owed everything to Dr. Staines. “I was on the wrong road altogether, and he put me right. To tell you the truth, I used to disobey him now and then, while he was alive, and I was always the worse for it; now he is gone, I never disobey him. I have written down a lot of wise, kind things he said to me, and I never go against any one of them. I call it my book of oracles. Dear me, I might have brought it with me.”
“Oh, yes! why didn't you?” rather reproachfully.
“I will bring it next time.”
“Pray do.”
Then she looked at him with her lovely swimming eyes, and said tenderly, “And so here is another that disobeyed him living, but obeys him dead. What will you think when I tell you that I, his wife, who now worship him when it is too late, often thwarted and vexed him when he was alive?”
“No, no. He told me you were an angel, and I believe it.”
“An angel! a good-for-nothing, foolish woman, who sees everything too late.”
“Nobody else should say so before me,” said the little gentleman grandly. “I shall take HIS word before yours on this one subject. If ever there was an angel, you are one; and oh, what would I give if I could but say or do anything in the world to comfort you!”
“You can do nothing for ME, dear, but come and see me often, and talk to me as you do—on the one sad theme my broken heart has room for.”
This invitation delighted Lord Tadcaster, and the sweet word “dear,” from her lovely lips, entered his heart, and ran through all his veins like some rapturous but dangerous elixir. He did not say to himself, “She is a widow with a child, feels old with grief, and looks on me as a boy who has been kind to her.” Such prudence and wariness were hardly to be expected from his age. He had admired her at first sight, very nearly loved her at their first interview, and now this sweet word opened a heavenly vista. The generous heart that beat in his small frame burned to console her with a life-long devotion and all the sweet offices of love.