"I hope you liked the book; the binding wasn't quite so nice as I should have wished," he began.
Aura interrupted him heartily.
"I liked it ever so much--thanks so many! And I shall always like it. That is the best of books--summer and winter they are always the same"--she became taken with her own thought and pursued it--"they aren't like flowers--you haven't to watch for their blooming time--you haven't even to smell their scent--you haven't to think for them of storms or slugs or frost and field mice"--here she smiled at her own alliterations--"but if you want them, there they are, ready to make you happy. Do you know, you've been a regular book to me lately, Ted?"
He flushed up with pleasure. "Have I?" he said frankly; "that's good hearing. I--I wish I were your whole library----" Once more he paused, obsessed by that idea of the night-mail to Paris.
As he went off to pack his things he almost wished that she had come in a little earlier; but then he would not have had such an eminently satisfactory talk with her grandfather. So far as he, at any rate, was concerned it was all plain sailing, for the old man, distressed at hearing of Ted's sudden departure, had for the first time taken him into his confidence. It was not exactly a pleasing confidence, but it was only what Ted had expected. Aura would be penniless, since years before Sylvanus Smith had sunk all his money in an annuity which would cease with his death. Under the circumstances, Ted had felt that both the kindest and the wisest thing was to allay anxiety--that tardy anxiety which was in itself but another form of selfishness--by speaking of his own love for Aura, and his earnest desire to marry her, if she would have him.
"Of course she will marry you!" Mr. Sylvanus Smith had said with calm shrewdness. "Who else is there for her to marry?"
Whereupon Ted, divided as to whether he was doing a magnanimous or a mean thing, had suggested Lord Blackborough. It had produced a perfect storm of incredulous irritation. The bare idea was absurd. Blackborough, like all in his rank, was merely amused by a pretty face. He, Sylvanus Smith, had only tolerated him as Ted's friend, and he would forbid him the house in future; no granddaughter of his should marry a lord!
Briefly, the old man whose life had been spent in preaching socialism and liberty in the abstract, who denied the existence of social rank, and proclaimed the right of the individual to independent action, was ready to forswear both tenets, and pose as a relentless parent of the good old type.
Ted had forborne to smile, and, feeling really magnanimous this time, had attempted to smooth over the old man's irritation, which none the less he knew to be points in his favour.
So, as he packed his portmanteau, he whistled lightheartedly.