"That is true, Margaret," said Sidney. "I have loved God and man more and better since I loved you."
He spoke earnestly, and in the agitated tone of deep feeling. Life was very full to him just then; and he felt day by day that he was greatly favored by the God he worshiped. His heart expanded with a vivid glow of religious gratitude. What more was there that he could desire? His lot was prosperous and happy beyond that of any man's he knew. Sidney was apt to look at himself through other men's eyes. If he looked at himself as a rich man it was through the eyes of City men, who spoke to one another of him as one of the most successful men in the City. As a religious man he looked at himself through the eyes of Margaret and the rector, who seemed satisfied that he was truly a Christian like themselves. It would, then, have been a crying ingratitude if he had not loved God, who was crowning him with blessings, and man, whose general lot was less prosperous than his own. There was only one more success to desire and to achieve, and that Margaret was unconsciously doing her utmost to attain for him. He must secure Dorothy and her large fortune for Philip.
"Philip," he said, "I see Dorothy yonder under the cedars. Go and tell her I am come home, and have brought something for her."
Sidney watched her and Philip with pleased eyes as they returned side by side along the terrace. She was still a slight, childish-looking girl; but there was no affectation of childish graces in her. She looked up into Philip's face with a shy, half smiling admiration, which had a peculiar attractiveness in it. Philip was conscious of this for the first time, and saw a new beauty, or rather a promise of beauty, in the dark eyes and the quaint, smiling face lifted up to him. Her eyes had a depth in them he had not observed before; and even the nervous interlacing of her fingers, as she ventured to talk to him, did not seem so awkward a trick as it did when he first saw her. Phyllis had never been shy with him; and the shyness of a pretty girl has a wonderful charm. Not that he could compare her with Phyllis for a moment. He was carrying the book she had been reading under the cedars, and looking into it he saw that it was the "Pensées de Pascal" done into English.
"Do you like this book?" he asked in some surprise.
"Very much," she answered.
"But do you understand it?" he asked again.
"Not all," she said; "you see, I cannot read it in French. But when I don't understand I ask Mrs. Martin. She lets me read with her two hours every day," she added, with a light in her eyes, and a tone of gladness in her low voice.
He wished it had been Phyllis who had read with his mother two hours a day. But Phyllis was too much of a butterfly to apply herself to anything for two hours at a time; and solid reading like this would be impossible to her. He was afraid that his father and mother both preferred Dorothy to his destined wife; and a disquieting shadow crossed his hitherto cloudless future as he saw the pleasure with which Sidney watched their approach.
Philip felt that there was a sort of disloyalty in thus thinking of Phyllis in comparison with any other girl; and as soon as he had found a chair for Dorothy, he strolled away, hastening his steps when he was out of sight of the terrace as he crossed the park to the Rectory grounds. There had been a clerical meeting at the Rectory, which had kept Phyllis at home with her mother. But now he caught sight of her standing on the other side of a sunk fence, which separated the garden from the park; and it seemed to Philip as if she felt she was being supplanted in the house which had always been a second home to her. He leaped lightly across the barrier and hastened to her side. As she looked up to him tears were glittering in her eyes.