“Are you better?” he said, as he crossed over.
“Better? yes,” she said softly; “and so happy!”
There was such a look of intensified joy in Laura’s face, that as he took his seat beside her, Charley Vining smiled pleasantly. He was accepting his fate.
And why not, he asked himself, when, with all their eccentricities, the family seemed ready to worship him? Sir Philip and Mr Bray had no sooner taken their places in a corner of the lesser drawing-room, and commenced their discussion upon the projected improvements, than Mrs Bray crossed over to where Charley was seated, and probably for the first time in her life forbore to shriek, and, leaning over him, actually whispered, as she stooped and kissed him on the forehead.
“Bless you, Vining! you have made us all so happy! But I have not said a word to him.”
Charley felt disposed to frown; but there was a genuine mother’s tear left upon his forehead, and he pressed Mrs Bray’s hand as she left him, carrying off Nelly at the same time.
It was all settled, then; it was to be. And why not? Let it be so, then. Some people said there was no fate in these things; what, then, was this, if it were not fate?
But he accepted it all, asking himself the while, could the gentle tremulous woman at his side be the Laura of old? How she drank in his every glance, eagerly listening for each word! Could he, as he had said he would, thoroughly dismiss the past, life might, after all, be endurable.
So he reasoned, as the evening passed away.
They had had tea, and Nelly had been sent to the piano to play piece after piece, not one of which was listened to, for those present were intent upon their own affairs. Charley talked in a low voice to Laura, Mrs Bray dozed in an easy-chair, and Nelly kept to her music.