“You seem,” she wrote, “to have been very anxious about father lately, so I thought you would like to read this letter from him. We are almost straight here now, but it has been very hard work, and I have missed you very much....”
There was more of the same sort, but I did not stop to read it. I passed it on to my mother, and eagerly read the few lines from my father. His letter was dated three days ago—the very day of my meeting with him in the Commercial Road, and the postmark was Ventnor.
“My dear child,” he commenced, “I am better and shall return for certain on Monday. The air here is delightful, and I have felt myself growing stronger every day. If you see the Bishop tell him that you have heard from me. My love to Kate, if you are writing. I hope that she will be coming down for next week. There is a good deal for me to say to her.—Your affectionate father, Horace Ffolliot.”
My mother read both letters, and then looked up at me with a great relief in her face.
“After all you see you must have been mistaken,” she exclaimed. “There can be no doubt about it.”
And I said no more, but one thing was as certain as my life itself—the man who had waved me back from following him along the pavements of the Commercial Road was most surely no other man than my father.
CHAPTER XXVIII
EASTMINSTER
The days that followed were, in a sense, like the calm before the threatened storm. As the date of my father’s promised return to Eastminster drew near, every day I expected to hear from Alice that he had abandoned his purpose, and that Northshire would see him no more. But no such letter came. On the contrary, when news did come it was news which astonished me.