"That was right. I am glad you said so. Did she tell you who he—this lover, was?"
"No. She said she could not, until he gave her permission. That whether they would ever be married she did not know. She knew nothing, save that he was good and kind, and the only creature in the world who had ever cared for her."
"Poor girl!"
"John,"—startled by his manner—"you have something to tell me? You know who this is—this man who has stood between my son and his happiness?"
"Yes, I do know."
I cannot say how far the mother saw—what, as if by a flash of lightning, I did; but she looked up in her husband's face, with a sudden speechless dread.
"Love, it is a great misfortune, but it is no one's blame—neither ours, nor theirs—they never thought of Guy's loving her. He says so—Edwin himself."
"Is it Edwin?"—in a cry as if her heart was breaking. "His own brother—his very own brother! Oh, my poor Guy!"
Well might the mother mourn! Well might the father look as if years of care had been added to his life that day! For a disaster like this happening in any household—especially a household where love is recognized as a tangible truth, neither to be laughed at, passed carelessly over, nor lectured down—makes the family cease to be a family, in many things, from henceforward. The two strongest feelings of life clash; the bond of brotherly unity, in its perfectness, is broken for ever.
For some minutes we sat, bewildered as it were, thinking of the tale as if it had been told of some other family than ours. Mechanically the mother raised her eyes; the first object they chanced to meet was a rude water-colour drawing, kept, coarse daub as it was, because it was the only reminder we had of what never could be recalled—one red-cheeked child with a hoop, staring at another red-cheeked child with a nosegay—supposed to represent little Edwin and little Guy.