“Indeed you were the handsomest man in Castor!” cried Mrs Luttrell proudly; “but you were the cleverest too, and—dear, dear!—what a little while ago it seems!”
“Gently, gently, old lady!” said the doctor, tenderly kissing the wrinkled forehead that was raised towards him. “Well, heaven’s blessing be upon her, my dear, and may her love be as evergreen as ours.”
Mrs Luttrell rose and laid her head upon his shoulder, and stood there, with a happy, peaceful look upon her pleasant face, although it was still wet with tears.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she sighed; “and it would be so sad.”
“Ah, wife!” said the doctor, walking slowly up and down the room, with his arm about Mrs Luttrell’s waist, “it’s one of Nature’s mysteries. We can’t rule these things. Look at Milly. Some girls begin love-making at seventeen, ah, and before! and here she went calmly on to four-and-twenty untouched, and finding her pleasure in her books and music, and home-life.”
“As good and affectionate a girl as ever breathed!” cried Mrs Luttrell.
“Yes, my dear; and then comes the man, and he has but to hold up his finger and say ‘Come,’ and it is done.”
“But she might have had Sir Gordon, and he is rich, and then she would have been Lady Bourne!”
“He was too old, my dear, too old. She looked upon him like a child would look up to her father.”
“Well, then, Mr Bayle, the best of men, I’m sure; and he is well off too.”