Sidney accepted the plans proposed by Philip and Dorothy with a sort of numb pain. He was no longer worthy to be their guide, and they were softly yet unconsciously setting him on one side. The burden was falling on their shoulders; and how readily, how courageously they were bearing it! There was as subtle a change in Dorothy as in Philip, inasmuch as there was an undertone of pity for him in all she said and did—a pity that was taking the place of the pride she had hitherto felt in him. She was very gentle and tender in her manner, hovering about him, and volunteering her companionship when he was setting out on the lonely walks with which he made away his time. But Sidney felt that all at once, in the prime of his life, his career was over. An ever increasing sense of separation and isolation crept over him: Sophy and her son stood between him and every other relationship. Possibly his public career would not greatly alter; his days in the city would pass pretty much as they had done. He would amass more money, and be thought well of as a rich man. But at home all was changed. His beloved son was no longer his firstborn; and even Margaret must feel keenly that Sophy had been his wife before she was.
The plan of traveling homeward in two parties was a wise one, for it would not do to subject two young girls like Phyllis and Dorothy to any annoyance from Martin's extreme savagery. Philip, too, acknowledged the prudence of Dorothy's suggestion, though it parted him from Phyllis, who gave him permission to see her on the eve of his departure with Martin.
She was sitting in a large, high-backed chair, covered with crimson velvet, against which her pale cheeks looked whiter, and her face more delicate, than they had ever done, and she spoke in a faint and languid voice, as if the exertion was too much for her.
"You will not be long after me, my darling?" he said anxiously. "I would have given all I have to have saved you this sorrow; and yet it is a comfort to me that you have been here. Now you know all about it, just as you have known all my life hitherto. There were never two people, not being brother and sister, who knew all about the other as you and I do."
"But, Philip," she asked languidly, "what do you suppose your future life will be now?"
"Oh! I must go into my father's business," he answered, "and set to work seriously. Or if my father would give his consent I should like most of all to walk the hospitals, and become a surgeon. I should like to be a famous surgeon."
"Good gracious, Philip!" she exclaimed, roused by such a proposition out of her listlessness; "and am I to be a doctor's wife? A doctor's wife, only having the brougham when you are not visiting your patients! And you would never be sure of going out with me. Perhaps I should not be in society at all!"
"Perhaps not," he replied, "but you will be my own Phyllis always."
"A fine compensation," she said, pouting and shrugging her shoulders. "I don't know what my mother will say about it all."
"But your father?" suggested Philip, with a smile.