“It is a contradiction in which I most sincerely rejoice, David,” she said; “one of the wishes of my heart fulfilled when I had given it up.”
“You do not know that it will be fulfilled.”
“I think it will, though you are right to take time, in case the decision should be partly due to disappointment.”
“If there can be disappointment where hope has never existed. But if a man finds he can’t have his great good, it may make him look for the greater.”
Mary sighed a mute and thankful acquiescence.
“The worst of it is about you, Mary. It is throwing you over just as you were coming to make me a home.”
“Never mind, Davie. It is only deferred, and at any rate we can keep together till Midsummer. Then I can go out again for a year or two, and perhaps you will settle somewhere where the curate’s sister could get a daily engagement.”
The next day they found the following letter at the post office:—
“The Folly, Jan. 3rd.
“My Dear Mary,—I suppose you may have attained the blessed realms that lie beyond the borders of Gossip, and may not have heard the nine days’ wonder that Belforest had descended on the Folly, and that poor old Mr. Barnes has left his whole property to me. My dear, it would be something awful even if he had done his duty and halved it between Elvira and me, and he has ingeniously tied it up with trustees so as to make restitution impossible. As it is, my income will be not less than forty thousand pounds a year, and when divided among the children they will all be richer than perhaps is good for them.