‘I stay till Saturday week.’
‘You had better not. You have been abominably treated; but this is no time for collisions. You agree with me, Phœbe; his absence would be the wisest course.’
‘Phœbe knows that annoyance between Mervyn and me is unhappily no novelty. We shall not revert to the subject, and I have reasons for staying.’
‘You need not fear,’ said Phœbe; ‘Robert always keeps his temper.’
‘Or rather we have the safeguard of being both sullen, not hot,’ said Robert. ‘Besides, Mervyn was right. I have had my share, and have not even the dignity of being injured.’
The need of cooling his partisan was the most effective means of blunting the sharp edge of his own vexation. Hearing Mervyn cross the hall, he called to offer to take his share in some business which they had to transact together. ‘Wait a moment,’ was the answer; and as Sir Bevil muttered a vituperation of Mervyn’s assurance, he said, decidedly, ‘Now, once for all, I desire that this matter be never again named between any of us. Let no one know what has taken place, and let us forget all but that my father was in charity with me.’
It was more than Sir Bevil was with almost any one, and he continued to pace the gallery with Phœbe, devising impossible schemes of compensation until the moment of his departure for London.
Robert had not relied too much on his own forbearance. Phœbe met her two brothers at dinner—one gloomy, the other melancholy; but neither altering his usual tone towards the other. Unaware that Robert knew of his father’s designs, nor of their prevention, Mervyn was totally exempt from compunction, thinking, indeed, that he had saved his father from committing an injustice on the rest of the family, for the sake of a fanatical tormentor, who had already had and thrown away more than his share. Subdued and saddened for the time, Mervyn was kind to Phœbe and fairly civil to Robert, so that there were no disturbances to interfere with the tranquil intercourse of the brother and sister in their walks in the woods, their pacings of the gallery, or low-voiced conferences while their mother dozed.
True to his resolve, Robert permitted no reference to his late hopes, but recurred the more vigorously to his parish interests, as though he had never thought of any wife save St. Matthew’s Church.
Home affairs, too, were matters of anxious concern. Without much sign of sorrow, or even of comprehension of her loss, it had suddenly rendered the widow an aged invalid. The stimulus to exertion removed, there was nothing to rouse her from the languid torpor of her nature, mental and physical. Invalid habits gave her sufficient occupation, and she showed no preference for the company of any one except Phœbe or her maid, to whose control her passive nature succumbed. At