Thus the subject of John’s letter was dropped for the present, but Mrs. Temple had not forgotten it. She waited until the squire went out of the room, and then went up to John, smilingly.
“Well, my nephew John,” she said, “I’ll leave you now to study your unpaid bills; or,” she added archly, “to read your love letters from an old woman, and one, maybe, from a young one, too!”
“I wish it were so,” replied John, as Mrs. Temple laughed and moved toward the door of the room; “but I am not so fortunate as you think.”
But the moment she had disappeared his expression changed, and he hastily drew out the envelope Miss Webster had directed, and found inside the letter from May. This also he quickly opened, and his face softened strangely as he read the tender words it contained.
“May, dear little May,” he murmured to himself, half-aloud, “and you miss me, darling, do you? but not more, not half so much, May, as I miss you.”
He read her long letter twice, and then put it into his pocket, and going into the hall, took a cap from the hat-stand, and strolled out into the park. The mist lay on the dewy grass and floated in the air, blurring the landscape somewhat, and hanging shadow-like around the trees. But John Temple scarcely noticed the atmosphere. He was trying to unravel some of the problems of his life; to make a crooked path straight for the sake of his young love.
“But for May I should not mind,” he was thinking, “but I must shield May; she must never know.”
Then he thought of her as he had first seen her by his young cousin’s grave; thought of the day when he had met her in the country lane gathering the hedge roses; and of those other meetings when they had drifted nearer and nearer to each other’s hearts.
“A good man would have fled from temptation, I suppose,” he replied, gloomily enough. “But I did not, and now—it is too late.”