Old Soolsby’s face turned away. His house overlooked every house in the valley beneath: he could see nearly every garden; he could even recognise many in the far streets. Besides, there hung along two nails on the wall a telescope, relic of days when he sailed the main. The grounds of the Cloistered House and the fruit-decked garden-wall of the Red Mansion were ever within his vision. Once, twice, thrice, he had seen what he had seen, and dark feelings, harsh emotions, had been roused in him.
“He will need us both—the Egyptian will need us both one day,” he answered now; “you more than any, me because I can help him, too—ay, I can help him. But married or single you could help him; so why waste your days here?”
“Is it wasting my days to stay with my father? He is lonely, most lonely since our Davy went away; and troubled, too, for the dangers of that life yonder. His voice used to shake when he prayed, in those days when Davy was away in the desert, down at Darfur and elsewhere among the rebel tribes. He frightened me then, he was so stern and still. Ah, but that day when we knew he was safe, I was eighteen, and no more!” she added, smiling. “But, think you, I could marry while my life is so tied to him and to our Egyptian?”
No one looking at her limpid, shining blue eyes but would have set her down for twenty-three or twenty-four, for not a line showed on her smooth face; she was exquisite of limb and feature, and had the lissomeness of a girl of fifteen. There was in her eyes, however, an unquiet sadness; she had abstracted moments when her mind seemed fixed on some vexing problem. Such a mood suddenly came upon her now. The pen lay by the paper untouched, her hands folded in her lap, and a long silence fell upon them, broken only by the twanging of the strips of cane in Soolsby’s hands. At last, however, even this sound ceased; and the two scarce moved as the sun drew towards the middle afternoon. At last they were roused by the sound of a horn, and, looking down, they saw a four-in-hand drawing smartly down the road to the village over the gorse-spread common, till it stopped at the Cloistered House. As Faith looked, her face slightly flushed. She bent forward till she saw one figure get down and, waving a hand to the party on the coach as it moved on, disappear into the gateway of the Cloistered House.
“What is the office they have given him?” asked Soolsby, disapproval in his tone, his eyes fixed on the disappearing figure.
“They have made Lord Eglington Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs,” she answered.
“And what means that to a common mind?”
“That what his Government does in Egypt will mean good or bad to our Egyptian,” she returned.
“That he can do our man good or ill?” Soolsby asked sharply—“that he, yonder, can do that?”
She inclined her head.