'I fancy he gathered hopes from Lady Liddesdale which he thinks justify him,' said the uncle. 'Should you consent if he got a secretaryship at the Embassy?'
'I should feel as if one of my greatest cares was relieved! I have tried to do right in the matter, but it is a hard one. I should be thankful indeed to see my little one cleared from this perplexity, and I begin to trust I shall. Everything seems to be so remarkably smoothing itself, as it were winding itself up.'
'Felix, I don't understand your tone. I can't see you distinctly, but I am sure more is amiss with you than Robert told me.'
'I was on the verge of bleeding to death after the accident,' said Felix, 'and I fancy the treatment I am going through keeps me low.'
'Treatment, what for?'
In a few technical words he repeated what he had told Gertrude.
'You speak with certainty!' exclaimed his friend.
'No, it is too much out of reach. They are trying to disperse it, and if that cannot be done, there would be a fight of strength of constitution. It seems to me hardly to get better or worse since the mere muscular strain passed off, only paining me on provocation, and telling chiefly in weakness and lassitude. It is curious how everything in my life seems drawing to a point, so that somehow I feel as if I were permitted to bind up my sheaves. Here is poor Edgar's fate certain so as to enable me to make arrangements about the property, and his child to be Cherry's object, making me far happier about her. And here you are; I have longed to pray for your being here to help us both when the crisis comes. You will?'
'I will! I will. So far as I dare to promise!'
'Remember. She knows nothing of this, only Clement. I could not get along without him. Poor Clem! Do you remember how we used to laugh at him? You will marvel at the strength and wisdom that have grown up in him. I rejoice to have come to such dependence on the brother I understood and perhaps liked least, and it is the same with Cherry. She has learnt to lean on him.'