“Cyril Mallow seemed to ask me to be protector to his wife and children, and I would have done anything I could, but Portlock and Cyril’s father have always met Littler with the same excuse. ‘There is plenty for them, and the offer would only give Mrs Cyril pain.’”
But why not now?
He sat thinking, gazing up at the bronzed busts of great legal luminaries passed away, and at the dark shadows they cast upon the walls.
“Do I love her? Heaven knows how truly and how well.”
He smiled then—a pleasant smile, which seemed to take away the hardness from his thoughtful face.
But it was not of Sage he was thinking, but of her two little girls and his meeting with them in the Kilby lane.
“God bless them!” he said, half aloud, “I love them with all my heart.”
The next day he was on his way down to Lawford, a calm, stern, middle-aged man, thinking of how the time had fled since, full of aspirations, he had come up to fight the battle for success. Sixteen years ago now, and success was won; but he was not happy. There was an empty void in his breast that he had never filled, and as he lay back in his corner of the carriage, he fell into a train of pleasanter thoughts.
The time had gone by for young and ardent love; but why should not he and Sage be happy still for the remainder of their days?
And then, in imagination, he saw them both going hand in hand down-hill, happy in the love of those two girls, whom he meant it to be his end and aim to win more and more to himself.