“Bayle,” he added, after a pause, “I am getting old and irritable; I feel every change. I called you a fool!”
“The irritable spirit of pain within—not you.”
“Ah! well,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “you know me by heart now, my dear boy. I want to say something ivery serious to you. I never said it before, though I have thought about it ever since those happy evenings we spent at Clerkenwell.”
Bayle turned to him wonderingly.
“You will bear with me—I may hurt your feelings.”
“If you do I know you will heal them the next time we meet,” replied Bayle.
“Well, then, tell me this. When I first began visiting at Mrs Hallam’s house there in London, had you not the full intention of some day asking Julie to be your wife?”
Christie Bayle turned his manly, sincere countenance full upon his old friend, and said, in a deep, low voice, broken by emotion:
“Such a thought had never entered my mind.”
“Never?”