For a minute Brian hesitated; but it seemed to him when he thought out the matter, that a father so loving as Raeburn would find no jealousy at the thought that the love he had deemed exclusively his own might, after all, have been given to another.
“I do not know whether I am right to tell you,” he said. “Would it make you happier to know that I love Erica that I have loved her for nearly nine years?”
Raeburn gave an ejaculation of astonishment. There was a long silence; for the idea, once suggested to him, he began to see what a likely thing it was and to wonder that he had not thought of it before.
“I think you are well suited to each other,” he said at last. “Now I understand your visit to Florence. What took you away again so suddenly?”
Brian told him all about the day at Fiesole. He seemed greatly touched; all the little proofs and coincidences which had never struck him at the time were so plain now. They were still discussing it when, at about five o'clock, Erica returned. She was pale and sad, but the worn, harassed, miserable look had quite gone. It was a strange time and place for a betrothal.
“Brian has been telling me about the day at Fiesole,” said Raeburn, letting his weak, nerveless hands play about in her hair as she knelt beside the bed. “You have been a leal bairn to me, Eric; I don't think I could have spared you then even though Brian so well deserved you. But now it makes me very happy to leave you to him; it takes away my only care.”
Erica had colored faintly, but there was an absence of responsiveness in her manner which troubled Raeburn.
“You do still feel as you did at Fiesole?” he asked. “You are sure of your own mind? You think you will be happy?”
“I love Brian,” she said in a low voice. “But, oh, I can't think now about being happy!” She broke off suddenly and hid her face in the bed clothes.
There was silence in the room. In a minute she raised herself and turned to Brian who stood beside her.