“I have other, and very much more serious, matters to talk over with you when we meet, but all shall be done in the spirit of love and confidence, I do trust, and if I am obliged to inflict pain upon you, you must remember that it is multiplied ten-fold upon my own head.
“I shall expect a line, sent either to myself or to Lucilla, announcing the hour of your arrival on Saturday. God by you, dearest of lads, until we meet.
“Your devoted
“Father.”
“Dear Lucilla,
“On second thoughts, I shall come home on Saturday, in time for dinner. Most likely I shall go straight off to London on Monday morning, but you needn’t say anything to Father about this. If you can, persuade him to have up the port on Sunday night.
“Yours,
“Adrian.”
“Dear lad! He is all anxiety to do right, at bottom,” said the Canon tenderly to Lucilla, when a censored version of this communication had been passed on to him. “You see how readily he submits to returning on Saturday, in order to please me.”
If Lucilla thought this act of submission inspired by fear, rather than by a desire to please, she did not say so.
The Canon had said nothing to her of his interview with Mr. Duffle, and made only one remark which might be held to refer to his visitor:
“We are all of us apt to set a false value on appearances, I suspect. Aye, my daughters, in spite of his ‘forty years in the wilderness,’ it is so with your father. Trivial vulgarities, or mere superficial coarseness, have blinded one time and again, till some sudden, beautiful impulse or flash of generous delicacy comes to rebuke one. Well, well—each mistake can be used as a rung of the ladder. Always remember that.”