“Who is it, Loo?” said the doctor. “I don’t recognize the gentleman.”
And, rising stiffly from his armchair, he took a step forward.
“It’s Charles, doctor, Charles Delambre,” faltered Louise.
“Yes, doctor; and I’ve come to take away your treasure. Also to thank you with my whole heart for your loving kindness in taking care of her. Without you what would she have done, me being so far away?”
Almost inarticulate with joy, the old man caught Charles’s hands in both his own, and pushed him into a chair. Then sinking back into his own, he gasped breathlessly—
“Ah, my boy, my boy, how I have longed for your return! It has given me more pain than you can think—the idea that I might die and leave this poor child friendless and alone in the world. But she has had no fear. She knew you would come, and she was right. But, Charley, my boy, before we say another word—your brother. You mustn’t forget him, and if, as I fear, your quarrel was fierce, you must forgive. His sufferings have been great. Never once has his face been seen in the village since you left, and, except that we hear an occasional word of him brought by a tramp, he might be dead. Go to him, Charles, and make it up, and perhaps the good Lord will lift the cloud of misery that has so long hung heavily over your house.”
Charles heard the kindly doctor’s little speech in respectful silence, then, speaking for the second time since entering the house, he said—
“You are right, doctor. I will be friends with George if he’ll let me. But I must first secure my wife. After all that has passed, I dare not waste an hour until we are married.”
Louise sat listening with the light of perfect approval on her fine face; and the doctor also in vigorous fashion signified his entire acquiescence. The rest of that happy evening was devoted to a recital of Charles’s wanderings, his escapes, and his good fortune, until, wearied out, those three happy people went to bed.
Next day Charles was busy. A special license had to be procured, and Louise must procure her simple wadding array. The facilities of to-day did not exist then, and the impatient young lover chafed considerably at the delay involved. But in due time the wedding came off, with the dear old doctor as guardian to give the bride away. The village was in a state of seething excitement; the labourers left their work, their wives left their household tasks, and all discussed with an eagerness that was amazingly different to their usual stolidity of demeanour the romantic happenings in their midst. Then, when the newly-married pair had returned to the doctor’s roomy house, and the villagers had drifted reluctantly homeward again, the ripples of unwonted disturbance gradually smoothed out and subsided. Charles and his wife sat side by side in the doctor’s parlour as the evening shadows fell, their benefactor’s glowing face confronting them, and the knowledge that half his home was theirs removing all anxiety for the immediate future from their minds.