“How do you do, Mr. Cossey?” she said. “I am glad to see you out, and hope that you are better.”
“I beg your pardon, I cannot hear you,” he said, turning round; “I am stone deaf in my right ear.”
A pang of pity shot through her heart. Edward Cossey, feeble, dejected, and limping from the jaws of Death, was a very different being to Edward Cossey in the full glow of his youth, health, and strength. Indeed, so much did his condition appeal to her sympathies that for the first time since her mental attitude towards him had been one of entire indifference, she looked on him without repugnance.
Meanwhile her father had shaken him by the hand, and led him to an armchair before the fire.
Then after a few questions and answers as to his accident and merciful recovery there came a pause.
At length he broke it. “I have come to see you both,” he said with a faint nervous smile, “about the letters you wrote me. If my condition had allowed I should have come before, but it would not.”
“Yes,” said the Squire attentively, while Ida folded her hands in her lap and sat still with her eyes fixed upon the fire.
“It seems,” he went on, “that the old proverb has applied to my case as to so many others—being absent I have suffered. I understand from these letters that my engagement to you, Miss de la Molle, is broken off.”
She made a motion of assent.
“And that it is broken off on the ground that having been forced by a combination of circumstances which I cannot enter into to transfer the mortgages to Mr. Quest, consequently I broke my bargain with you?”