“To me,” he resumed, “the sweetest fountain of money is the hand of love, but a man has no right to take it from that fountain except he is in want of it. I am not. True, I go somewhat bare, my lady; but what is that when my Lord would have it so?”
He opened again the bag, and slowly, reverentially indeed, drew from it one of the new sovereigns with which it was filled. He put it into a waistcoat pocket, and laid the bag on the table.
“But your clothes are shabby, sir,” said Clementina, looking at him with a sad little shake of the head.
“Are they?” he returned, and looked down at his lower garments, reddening and anxious. “—I did not think they were more than a little rubbed, but they shine somewhat,” he said. “—They are indeed polished by use,” he went on, with a troubled little laugh; “but they have no holes yet—at least none that are visible,” he corrected. “If you tell me, my lady, if you honestly tell me that my garments”—and he looked at the sleeve of his coat, drawing back his head from it to see it better—“are unsightly, I will take of your money and buy me a new suit.”
Over his coat-sleeve he regarded her, questioning.
“Everything about you is beautiful!” she burst out. “You want nothing but a body that lets the light through!”
She took the hand still raised in his survey of his sleeve, pressed it to her lips, and walked, with even more than her wonted state, slowly from the room. He took the bag of gold from the table, and followed her down the stair. Her chariot was waiting her at the door. He handed her in, and laid the bag on the little seat in front.
“Will you tell him to drive home,” she said, with a firm voice, and a smile which if anyone care to understand, let him read Spenser’s fortieth sonnet. And so they parted. The coachman took the queer shabby un-London-like man for a fortune-teller his lady was in the habit of consulting, and paid homage to his power with the handle of his whip as he drove away. The schoolmaster returned to his room, not to his Plato, not even to Saul of Tarsus, but to the Lord himself.
CHAPTER LXI.
THOUGHTS.
When Malcolm took Kelpie to her stall the night of the arrival of Lady Bellair and her nephew, he was rushed upon by Demon, and nearly prostrated between his immoderate welcome and the startled rearing of the mare. The hound had arrived a couple of hours before, while Malcolm was out. He wondered he had not seen him with the carriage he had passed, never suspecting he had had another conductress, or dreaming what his presence there signified for him.