And she rose to meet the doctor.
V
John sat in his room, absorbed in contemplation of a tiny lace-edged pocket-handkerchief. He spread it out upon his knee, and laughed. He crumpled it up in his palm, and pressed it to his face, and drank deep of its faint perfume,—faint, but powerfully provocative of visions and emotions. He had found it during the night on the floor of the sick-room, and had captured and borne it away like a treasure. He spread it out on his knee again, and was again about to laugh at its small size and gauzy texture, when his eye was caught by something in its corner. He held it nearer to the window. The thing that had caught his eye was a cypher surmounted by a crown, embroidered so minutely as almost to call for a magnifying glass. But without a glass he could see that the cypher was composed of the initials M and D, and that the crown was not a coronet, but a closed crown, of the pattern worn by mediatised princes.
"What on earth can be the meaning of this?" he wondered, frowning, and breathing quick.
But he was stopped from further speculation for the moment by a knock at the door. The postman entered with two letters, for one of which, as it was registered, John had to sign. When he had tipped the postman and was alone again, he put his registered letter on the dressing-table (with a view to disciplining curiosity and exercising patience, possibly) and turned his attention to the other. In a handsome, high old hand, that somehow reminded him of the writer's voice, it ran as follows:—
"DEAR JOHN,
"I was heart-broken not to see you when I drove over to say good-bye this afternoon, but chance favoured me at least to the extent of letting me see your miller's daughter, and you may believe that I was glad of an opportunity to inspect her at close quarters. My dear boy, she is no more a miller's daughter than you are. Her beauty—there's race in it. Her manner and carriage, her voice, accent, her way of dressing, (I'd give a sovereign for the name of her dressmaker), the fineness of her skin, her hair, everything—there's race in 'em all, race and consciousness of race, pride, dignity, distinction. These things don't come to pass in a generation. I'm surprised at your lack of perspicacity. And those blue eyes of yours look so sharp, too. But perhaps your wish was father to your thought. You felt (well, and so to some extent did I) that it would be more romantic. She's probably a very great swell indeed, and I expect the Frau What's-her-name she's staying with will turn out to be her old governess or nurse or something. When those Austrians can show quarterings, (of course you must bar recent creations—they're generally named Cohen), they can show them to some effect. They think nothing of thirty-two. All of which, au fond, rather rejoices me, for if she really had been a miller's daughter, it would have seemed a good deal like throwing yourself away, and who knows what your rusty, crusty old uncle B. might have said? I've long had a rod in pickle for him, and t'other day I applied it. Attendez.
"Don't forget the pig you purchased—so gallantly and confidingly. I would not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments—your pig will gobble 'em up. You should by this have received a communication from my solicitors. Remember, you have pledged your sacred promise. There must be no question of trying to shirk or burke it. Remember that I am quite outrageously rich. I have no children of my own, and no very near relatives, (and my distant ones are intensely disagreeable), and I can't help looking upon the heir of the Blanchemains as a kind of spiritual son. In your position there's no such thing as having too much money. Take all that comes, and never mind the quarter whence. They're Plymouth Brethren, and send me tracts.
"Good-bye now till August, if not before. For of course in August you must come to me at Fring. Will you bring your bride? When and where the wedding? I suppose they'll want it in Austria. Beware of long engagements—or of too short ones. The autumn's the time,—the only pretty ring-time. You see, you'll need some months for the preparation of your trousseau. I love a man to be smart. Well, good-bye. I was so sorry about that child's illness, but thankful to hear she was mending.