"Well, I could charge so moderately that my attendance would not be a burden. I am very grateful to Mr. Ivison for the position he gave me, but I would like to do something more and better in life than I can accomplish as his clerk. A physician among the poor has so many chances to speak the truth to those who might otherwise never hear it. Now this income from my father's estate would enable me to set about the necessary studies at once, and the only question in my mind is, will they receive me at the university?"
"Egbert," said Mrs. Arnot, with one of those sudden illuminations of her face which he so loved to see, "do you remember what I said long ago, when you were a disheartened prisoner, about my ideal of knighthood? If you keep on you will fulfil it."
"I remember it well," he replied, "but you are mistaken. My best hope is to find, as you said upon another occasion, my own little nook in the vineyard, and quietly do my work there."
After considerable hesitation the faculty of the university received
Haldane as a student, and Mr. Ivison parted with him very reluctantly.
His studies for the past two years, and several weeks of careful review,
enabled him to pass the examinations required in order to enter the
Junior year of the college course.
As his name appeared among those who might graduate in two years, the world still further relaxed its rigid and forbidding aspect, and not a few took pains to manifest to him their respect for his resolute upward course.
But he maintained his old, distant, unobtrusive manner, and no one was obliged to recognize, much less to show, any special kindness to him, unless they chose to do so. He evidently shrank with a morbid sensitiveness from any social contact with those who, in remembrance of his past history, might shrink from him. But he had not been at the university very long before Mrs. Arnot overcame this diffidence so far as to induce him to meet with certain manly fellows of his class at her house.
In all the frank and friendly interchange of thought between Mrs. Arnot and the young man there was one to whom, by tacit consent, they did not refer, except in the most casual manner, and that was Laura Romeyn. Haldane had not seen her since the time she stumbled upon him in his character of wood-sawyer. He kept her image in a distant and doubly-locked chamber of his heart, and seldom permitted his thoughts to go thither. Thus the image had faded into a faint yet lovely outline which he had learned to look upon with a regret that was now scarcely deep enough to be regarded as pain. She had made one or two brief visits to her aunt, but he had taken care never to meet her. He had learned incidentally, however, that she had lost her father, and that her mother was far from well.
When calling upon Mrs. Arnot one blustering March evening, toward the close of his Junior year, that lady explained her anxious, clouded face by saying that her sister, Mrs. Romeyn, was very ill, and after a moment added, half in soliloquy, "What would she do without Laura?"
From this he gathered that the young girl was a loving daughter and a faithful nurse, and the image of a pale, yet lovely watcher rose before him with dangerous frequence and distinctness.
A day or two after he received a note from Mrs. Arnot, informing him that she was about to leave home for a visit to her invalid sister, and might be absent several weeks. Her surmise proved correct, and when she returned Laura came with her, and the deep mourning of the orphan's dress but faintly reflected the darker sorrow that shrouded her heart. When, a few sabbaths after her arrival, her veiled figure passed up the aisle of the church, he bowed his head in as sincere sympathy as one person can give for the grief of another.