"All demands!" I echoed, bewildered.
He repeated the sentence word for word. "Can you remember it? Literally, mind! And post it at once, before we return from church."
Here the mother's call was heard. "John, are you coming?"
"In a moment, love," for her hand was on the door outside; but her husband held the other handle fast. He then went on, breathlessly, "You understand, Phineas? And you will be careful, very careful? SHE MUST NOT KNOW—not till tonight."
"One word. Guy is alive and well?"
"Yes—yes."
"Thank God!"
But Guy's father was gone while I spoke. Heavy as the news might be—this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw Lord Ravenel—it was still endurable. I could not conjure up any grief so bitter as the boy's dying.
Therefore, with a quietness that came naturally under the compulsion of such a necessity as the present, I rejoined the rest, made my excuses, and answered all objections. I watched the marriage-party leave the house. A simple procession—the mother first, leaning on Edwin; then Maud, Walter, and Lord Ravenel; John walked last, with Louise upon his arm. Thus I saw them move up the garden, and through the beech-wood, to the little church on the hill.
I then wrote the letter and sent it off. That done, I went back into the study. Knowing nothing—able to guess nothing—a dull patience came over me, the patience with which we often wait for unknown, inevitable misfortunes. Sometimes I almost forgot Guy in my startled remembrance of his father's look as he called me away, and sat down—or rather dropped down—into his chair. Was it illness? yet he had not complained; he hardly ever complained, and scarcely had a day's sickness from year to year. And as I watched him and Louise up the garden, I had noticed his free, firm gait, without the least sign of unsteadiness or weakness. Besides, he was not one to keep any but a necessary secret from those who loved him. He could not be seriously ill, or we should have known it.