“I think you ought to go,” said Mary at last.
“I see no ought in the case. Last year the work dragged, and was oppressive; but you see how different it has become.”
“That is the very reason,” said Mary, the colour flying to her checks. “It will not do to stay lingering here as we did last summer, and not only on your own account.”
“You need not be afraid,” was the muttered answer, as David bent down his head over the exercise he was correcting. She made no answer, and ere long he began again, “I don’t mean that her equal exists, but I am not such a fool as to delude myself with a spark of hope.”
“She is too nice for that,” said Mary.
“Just so,” he said, glad to relieve himself when the ice had been broken. “There’s something about her that makes one feel her to be altogether that doctor’s, as much as if he were present in the flesh.”
“Are you hoping to wear that out? For I don’t think you will.”
“I told you I had no hope,” he answered, rather petulantly. “Even were it otherwise, there is another thing that must withhold me. It has got abroad that she may turn out heiress to the old man at Belforest.”
“In such a hopeless case, would it not be wiser to leave this place altogether?”
“I cannot,” he exclaimed; then remembering that vehemence told against him, he added, “Don’t be uneasy; I am a reasonable man, and she is a woman to keep one so; but I think I am useful to her, and I am sure she is useful to me.”