CHAPTER XVI
"MY LADY MERCIFUL"
"I am glad Mr. Dalabey spared her," said Kathleen.
She nodded towards the little figure of the nymph standing up from the middle of the lake.
"So am I!" Allan said. "But I've a great respect for Dalabey, he does not look it, but he is an artist. He has a right perception, a sense of fitness. Dalabey is a reader and a thinker, too. Kathleen, you would be surprised by the depth of Dalabey's knowledge, for all that, he says 'I be' and 'Du 'ee?' Which, after all, may be better English than that which you and I speak. You would hardly believe that Dalabey and Ruskin have more than a nodding acquaintance, but so it is! Yes, I'm glad he spared the little stone maid. Do you know the first morning we were here, dear, I worried about her. I rose early and came out to see if she were still here and there she was, a monument to Dalabey's good sense! I've congratulated him since!"
She was listening to him with a smile on her lips. Now she glanced at him, at the tall, big young man by her side—her husband!
"Allan," she said suddenly, "Allan, you seem to be very happy!"
"Happy!" he was startled. "Of course I am happy. Why—why did you say that? I am happy and content. I Have the dearest and best man in the world for father. I have a wife who is friend and comrade——" he pressed her hand. "I have a home, the like of which there is not to be found in all England! Happy—why not, Kathleen?"
She was silent for a moment. He had said the dearest father and his wife—after all his wife was only friend and comrade—only! Why did she feel vaguely dissatisfied, had she not set herself to be just that very thing, that he said she was—friend, comrade, and now he had said it, she felt a little regret.
"And you would not have things different from what they are, Allan?"